Estranged
by EmaniaHilel
Summary: [Future!Fic] Because she had fully expected never to see him again, the vision of Nightwing crouched, hands on knees and easily balanced on the stone edge of her balcony's balustrade, like some sort of predator...seemed impossible and somewhat dreamlike
1. Part I: Raven

**A/N:**

**_HAPPY BIRTHDAY KYSRA!_**

Well, so technically, happy _advanced_ birthday, because her birthday isn't until Monday, the 24th. But, considering I wanted to have this posted up to a certain point by her birthday, I JUST realized today that I'd have to get on the ball and start posting it, _today._ So here I am.

I have four parts written and pretty much ready to post. (I always give them a 'looksie' before I post for final beta-ing stuff. But they're written. (And the only one I want to look over a bit more complete is the fourth one, actually...)

Part IV won't be the last one, but it _will_ be the last one before I come back from the Bar Exam. And considering Kysra's going to be at my house on the Friday after the Bar Exam, maybe it'll take me a little longer to get stuff up after that...like a week (which is as long as she's going to be visiting me.)

About this fic: As I said, it is a birthday present for Kysra. I asked her what she wanted and she told me of a scene she saw visually but didn't feel the inspiration to draw or to write. It was just a scene, a moment in time (I'll tell you guys when it comes up in the writing, not in this chapter) and for a few weeks, I was visualizing the scene, I could see it clearly, but I didn't know why they were there or how they had gotten there. Then finally, one day, I was listening to this song, **_Far Away_** by Nickelback and I just _knew_. So...here it is.

Oh, and it's a Future Fic. And I've got WAY more of Raven's history thought up than I think will EVER come up in this story.

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_**Estranged  
**__**Part One: Raven**_

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"_When we two parted / In silence and tears/ Half broken-hearted / To sever for years..."  
_- When We Two Parted, George Gordon, Lord Byron

_November 12, 2015_

"You were _just_ about to say yes, Rachel!"

Rachel Roth M.D. (known, once upon a time, as Raven) sighed into the receiver, "Amos, I know what I was about to say, but that was before I knew where this thing was taking place," she insisted. "I just can't go there."

"Why not?" he pressed. He waited for a few seconds and, having been her mentor from her first year in med school served him well since he didn't need to see her in order to realize she was rolling her eyes at his question. "It's not like the conference is taking place in the bad part of town, Rache," he insisted. "You're not going to be in any danger...hell, you don't even have to leave the hotel if you don't want to and trust me, _The Plaza_ is a helluva hotel to spend three days in!" He paused and when he didn't even hear her breathing, he sighed, "Did I mention the Hospital's picking up the tab?" he tried another tact. "Completely? From all of your meals to rental cars, drivers, taxis, all your incidentals?"

Rachel sighed, "That's not part of it..."

"I didn't think there was ever a city that could scare you so badly that you wouldn't even set foot in it!" he teased. "I mean, come on, so Blüdhaven has a bad rep, it's been much better since that Nightwing fellow has moved in."

Rachel tensed at the name and the pen she had been doodling with scratched the page, "That's what I'm afraid of."

"Please Rachel?" Amos Julien, Medical Doctor, and head of pediatrics at Community Medical Center never pleaded, but he pleaded now. "I can't go to this thing and no one else here can either, you're my only hope!"

Rachel rolled her eyes and scoffed, "Being a little over dramatic, aren't you?" she asked.

"If someone doesn't show up representing the Hospital, you know that the Association of Doctor's will take away our rank and the Hospital's Board of Trustees will skin me alive if I allow that to happen..." he took a breath but continued before Rachel could interrupt, "And Kim will never speak to me again if I go away on our anniversary, you know how long that woman can keep a grudge..."

"Amos..." Rachel started in what she hoped was a reasonable tone of voice.

"Do you want to break up a happy marriage, Rachel?" Amos pressed.

Rachel shook her head, "Laying it on a bit thick, aren't we?"

"No one else at the hospital can do it, and you have privileges here so you're my only hope..."

"What about my patients?" she used the last card she had.

"What about them?" he asked. "Tell me you have an emergency case to see on Friday or Monday?" he challenged. "They're the only days you'll have to take off because the rest of the conference is during the weekend." He thought about it, "And I'll cover for you on Friday and Monday. I'll take your patients, just tell them to come see me at the hospital..."

"No, no," she interrupted. "If you are going to cover for me you're not going to have my patients drive all the way to Fresno to sit in your waiting room until you can see them." She insisted. "I'll see who I can move around, but for the last ones I can't, you'll have to make due with driving out to my clinic."

"Rachel..."

"Those are my terms, Amos..." she said certainly. "I won't punish my patients cause you want some nookie time with your wife."

"Well, that's putting it bluntly," he said wryly.

"But honestly."

He couldn't argue with her. "Fine...fine...do it. Just send me a schedule of the patients you can't reschedule, try and put them in a block of time so I won't have to drive back and forth and I'll do it."

She sighed. "Fine, you send me all the information about the Conference..." she said with less than enthusiasm in her voice.

"Already done," Amos replied just as the 'mail' icon popped up on her computer screen. "Check your email."

"You don't waste any time, do you?" she asked dryly.

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It was easy, most days, not to think about him at all and pretty early on in their estrangement, Raven had realized that was really the best way to deal with the whole situation.

At first, she had half-expected to wake up and find him in her apartment nearly everyday. When she walked home after class, she tried not to be disappointed when she hadn't seen him waiting on her doorstep. Every corner she turned held the possibility of his presence, every knock on her door baited her breath until she nearly suffocated with disappointment.

He had promised her nothing, she knew that. Logically, she knew he owed her nothing either and that their parting had been awkward at best, so there really was no reason why he should come after her or why he would contact her. No reason whatsoever except for their bond. The connection they had shared, the understanding that had always existed between them. Even though logically she knew there was no reason why he _would_ show up in her life again, emotionally, she half expected him to prove logic wrong, the way he had so many times before.

No one had known, except maybe the man himself, how much he meant to her those years when they were a team. She loved him. She loved him more than she loved anyone else she had ever known, and she loved him as more than a friend. She always had, probably even from the first moment he had given her his trust and backed it up by his loyalty. She knew it, and maybe even he knew it. She loved him, but she was content to be a friend. She didn't need anything else from him so long as she could see him everyday and talk to him and share his confidences.

When the Titans disbanded, all that changed.

_They_ all changed. The change had been coming on for some time, but none of them had been willing to accept it until Starfire was called back to Tamaran at the death of Galfore. Having left no heirs, the throne and responsibility was hers once again and that time, she could not refuse. When Starfire left, they all stopped pretending.

Raven kept in touch with all of them and they kept tabs on her more than they wanted to admit they did. Cyborg (Victor now) still thought of her as the little sister he never had and still called her every other day. She was still expected over to their house in Arizona on holidays and birthdays and occasionally for the casual dinner. Garfield (then, Beast Boy) still called her to complain about whatever it was happened to be bothering him at the time and occasionally crashed at her place when he was between Green Peace missions.

As prepared as she was for change, the first time she saw a picture of Nightwing, she wept. The article in the local paper about the new vigilante in such a lawless city such as Blüdhaven showed a face that was as familiar to her as the one that stared back at her in her mirror. And yet, it was so different it startled her. When she wept, it was not because of the changes or the growth he had taken on. No. She had been prepared for those. She wept because the line of his chin and the set of his shoulders reminded her of the first time she had ever seen him. It was the face of a man who had no family, or one who had forgotten that he did indeed have one.

She had left for Blüdhaven the very next day. She hadn't made it beyond the city limits.

Instead, she called him. He had taken her call and although the words he spoke were civil, his tone was so strained it nearly broke her heart to hear it. She felt the chasm between them gape wider and wider and for the first time since that first time they met, she had absolutely no idea how to reach out to him. She didn't know how to speak to him. Not when he pushed her away so thoroughly.

That day, when she hung up the phone, she wept again because she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he would never come after her.

Life moved on. It changed and flowed. And Raven changed with it.

She rarely donned the cloak and leotard anymore. Her sleepy little Northern California town where she had hung up her General Practitioner Shingle rarely saw crime and she had taken up medicine to help people another way...a way that might perhaps offer her a real life. By being a doctor in a small town, she helped people on a one on one basis, she knew the names of each person she helped, she attended birthday parties for children she had helped usher into the world and was invited to block parties and family gatherings. She was Doc Rae, for whom the old lady across town brought her fresh baked banana bread every other Sunday and for whom the mother of her receptionist made homemade muffins. And if her patients' broken bones healed just a little faster than normal, no one thought anything of it other than how lucky they were to have such a good doctor in their town.

But just because she rarely, if ever, wore her cloak and leotard anymore didn't mean she had forgotten where she came from. It didn't mean she had forgotten that she _was_ Raven, as well as Doctor Rae. It didn't mean she didn't take it with her whenever she traveled.

Therefore, _not_ taking it to Blüdhaven, even though she had absolutely no intention of stepping on Nightwing's territorial toes, never occurred to her.

Still, when she found herself racing through the Blüdhaven city blocks toward _The Plaza – Blüdhaven_, aware the way she had never been before of the presence of her leotard and cloak in her suitcase, she couldn't help but look up at the blurring rooftops with some trepidation.

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All those years ago (nine years could seem like a lifetime when each moment is packed full of life), Raven had sworn to herself that she would _not_ think about Richard. She would not buy newspapers with Nightwing articles, she would not wonder about Richard the person, she would even stop herself from thinking about him in that moment as she calms herself down for sleep. After awhile, _not_ thinking about Richard became a habit, like breathing. Something she didn't have to think about to do so that when, every so often, she did catch a glimpse of him on the television as she flipped channels or heard his name casually in conversation from the lips of her employees or patients, she didn't flinch, but it always caught her by surprise, like, _'oh. That's right. I'm breathing. If I stop, I die.'_

Just for a split second she would wonder about him, about his life, but then her patient would need her or she would realize she had stopped walking in the middle of the sidewalk and someone would be calling out to her asking her if she was alright and she would automatically push the thought of him away from her mind.

It was a defense mechanism that helped keep her sane. It functioned like glue to help keep the bruised bits of her heart from breaking apart completely long enough for time to take care of the healing. But she had used it so long, that she had never thought to stop using it to see whether or not thinking about him still hurt. She had never tested it.

That brisk September afternoon as she looked out onto the city of Blüdhaven sprawled out beneath her hotel room balcony, she knew the answer to the question she'd never had enough courage to ask: _It still hurts like hell_.

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Three days of conferences and meetings and cocktails and dinners and Raven had barely had cause to leave the hotel, let alone catch a glimpse of the city proper. She had brought his address with her, but she hadn't used it. She had been too busy, her days too full of nonsensical things she wouldn't remember for thinking about what he might say if he opened his door to find her there. Or, worse yet, were the speeches she forced herself to take down word for word rather than look at the door one more time in the unconscious hope that he might have known she was in his city and come barging into the conference center.

In the small town where she had made her home, she couldn't possibly wear her leotard and cloak and go flying about even to just flex her metaphysical wings, to feel the rush of power flow through her as she used abilities she had repressed. It wasn't exactly like an addiction, using her powers, it was more like living her whole life with a fine gauze over her senses, diluting her sight and numbing her senses _not_ to use her powers. She didn't regret the decision she had made to refrain from using her abilities, she wouldn't give up the chance at the life she had for the life she had known all of her youth, but the prospect of being somewhere where she could be Raven again without drawing undue attention, where she could take off the gauze and see and feel the world the way she was meant to again was ultimately, too tempting to pass up.

Too tempting for even the possibility of drawing unwarranted attention from the vigilante corner to dissuade her from slipping back into her old uniform.

Many things had changed, but her appreciation for heights never had, so her first act while in uniform (to teleport herself to the hotel's rooftop) was not a surprising one.

She breathed in a deep lungful of the air, so much clearer at this height, as her cape whipped in the breeze. Her senses sang with each sensation: the breeze running through her hair, the sounds of a bustling city at night, the press of so many lives against her empathic shields. She had even missed the caress of the fabric of her cape as it stroked her legs.

She felt like a bird on a perch again. She felt like herself again.

If she closed her eyes and just listened, she could almost forget the last 9 years had even passed. She might believe she was standing on the roof of the Titans Tower, and could faintly hear Beast Boy whining about losing a game to Cyborg while Starfire mangled the lyrics to some popular song as she worked in the kitchen and Robin might, _just might_, be about to walk through the roof's door to join her.

When she took to the air, heading in the first direction that occurred to her, it was more to get away from the ghost memories than it was to actually feel flight again. Once she had begun flying, however, she reveled in that sensation as well.

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**A/N:** So, what do you think so far? Part II will be up tomorrow evening.

**Soundtrack:** Music has been _very_ important for this fic specifically, so I'll be telling you guys the songs I had on repeat while I wrote each Part, kay? At least the most prominent ones.

1. 100 Years, Five For Fighting

2. Pero Te Extrano, Andrea Bocelli

3. Somewhere In Between, Lifehouse

4. Everytime, Britney Spears

5. The Ghost of You, My Chemical Romance


	2. Part II: Robin

_(Expect two of these tomorrow: one in the morning(ish), and one in the evening.)_

**A/N:** Here's Part II and we get what's been going on with Robin (aka Nightwing.) Just in case you don't remember the date I started Part I with, it's the same date that I'm starting this part with. In other words, I'm taking you back in time to the date that Raven gets the call from Amos in Part I, _before_ she gets to Blüdhaven. (Just so there's no confusion)

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_**Estranged  
**__**Part II: Robin**_

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_November 12, 2015_

"_My demons and my angels reappeared / There are only traces of the man you thought I'd be..."  
_- Always At Your Side, Sheryl Crow & Sting

Detective Dick Grayson looked up indifferently from his computer screen when the file slid across his desk, knocking into his elbow. When he realized it was his captain that had thrown the brown file so rudely across his desk, his expression changed not one whit. "Have you taken to attacking me with file folders now?" he asked casually. He raised his eyebrows at the frown on his Captain's face. "Hoping I might bleed to death from a paper cut wound?"

Captain Elliot Meloni frowned even harder and crossed his arms over his chest, "Take a look at the file, Grayson."

Dick shrugged and looked down at the file by his elbow, reading the information on the cover upside down, "American Medical Association Conference..." he read aloud. "So?" he looked back at his Captain. "Did someone die of boredom at the conference?"

Meloni shook his head, more out of disbelief at Grayson's blasé attitude than in an actual response to his sarcastic inquiry. "The conference is in two days, but guess who drew the lucky straw for security detail?"

Dick leaned forward onto the desk, his bored expression hardening immediately, "I'm a homicide detective, Cap, not a babysitter to some stuffed shirt doctors."

"No one's asking you to babysit, Grayson, just check out the hotel's security..." Meloni sighed. "Apparently, the Mayor fought tooth and nail to get the conference held in our _fair_ city, and he wants to make sure we do everything in our power so that those prissy doctors don't get hurt while they're here."

Dick opened up the file, his eyes scanning for the hotel name, although he was pretty sure it would be their most swank hotel. "They're at _The Plaza_," he said, thinking. "I can call Pete, he heads the security over there, ask him if he needs anything from us and ask him to go over his security plans," he looked up at Meloni, "Would that be enough or do I actually have to take time away from the real crooks to take a walk through?"

Meloni shrugged, "Use your infamous instinct, Grayson...it's your responsibility now."

_Great_, Dick thought as he watched his captain walk away. His responsibility. That meant even more work for Detective Dick Grayson and an extra area to add to Nightwing's patrol.

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He had meant to do at least one pass at the hotel and surrounding areas every night while the conference was going on, but on the first night of the conference, he had gotten a tip about a planned spree of Jewelry Heists and his every moment had been taken up dealing with those idiots one way or another. If it hadn't been about stopping them from attacking, it had been about putting them away or interrogating them after he had caught them.

What with one thing and another, the conference was over by the time Nightwing stood on a roof across the street from _The Plaza_. He hadn't heard of any trouble going on or planned for the conference attendees, though, so when he went to _The Plaza_ it really had been more about doing something he had told himself he would than actually fearing for anyone's safety.

Most of Blüdhaven's criminal element didn't care about tourists unless they were stupid and strayed down a dark alley or happened upon something they had no business witnessing. They wouldn't really come for tourists at a hotel...especially not for a conference of doctors. Sure, they might be rich, but doctors weren't known for their propensity to travel with lots of jewelry or cash.

He wasn't worried, but as he approached the hotel's roof, he caught sight of something that almost made him let go of the handle of his grappling hook and go hurtling onto the sidewalk below.

In the periphery of his sight, a streak of pure, brilliant white flashed for a moment, contrasting sharply with the blue-black sky. He turned his head immediately, his pulse jumping into his throat at the thought that rushed into his brain, but even with his quick reflexes, it was gone before he could ascertain its nature.

He did his job, he always did. On the roof of _The Plaza Hotel_ he checked doors and locks and listened for a few moments to make certain there was no trouble the way he had planned to, but all the while, he couldn't help but wonder whether he had simply imagined that flash of white or if _she_ really had flown back into his life.

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For years, Raven had been Robin's anchor.

Before her, he had been adrift in a sea of someone else's dreams and desires. He hadn't been Robin then, even though he had taken on the mantle of Robin years before. He hadn't been Richard either. He had been the Batman's sidekick...Bruce Wayne's perception of what he _should_ have been.

After Raven, he had a purpose.

He knew she didn't _find_ that purpose for him. She didn't assign him that purpose, but in needing his help, in depending on him, she helped him find himself.

He had never known how to tell her how much she meant to him.

Not even when she was about to walk out of his life and leave him.

And when she was gone, he was left with nothing except Robin, a name that no longer suited him and a suit that no longer fit him. And as for his purpose?

If that really had been Raven in the white over _The Plaza_'s roof, what would she think of his purpose now?

He scoffed as he thumped the petty hood's head against the concrete wall of the abandoned warehouse and watched the man's drug addled body slump to the floor.

_'What purpose?'_ he wondered.

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He was so intent at scanning the area surrounding the wharf that when the buzzing came against his hip, he almost jumped. Of course, Nightwing didn't jump in surprise at anything, but he was sorely tempted.

Instead, he removed the console from his belt and stared at the blinking numbers. He sighed and tapped the button on the console that would open the line. "Yes?" he spoke in a normal voice, knowing the person on the other end would hear him clearly thanks to the marvels of technology.

"Grayson, I need you back here, ASAP," Captain Meloni groused onto the line. "Another costumed freak's been spotted and I need to get you on this right away."

Instantly on alert, Nightwing stood to his full 6 foot 3 inch height, "Where was she spotted?" he asked.

There was a pause on the line before the captain asked, "How did you know it was a she?"

Nightwing internally cursed his loose tongue. "My infamous instinct, remember?" he asked flippantly.

"When was the last time you got laid?" Meloni asked bluntly. "If you've got women on the brain this badly, I think however long it's been, you need--"

"Gee, thanks, Cap for the concern," he interrupted sarcastically. "Say, your daughter back from college yet?" he asked casually.

"You just look at her too long, Grayson, and I'll pull your balls out tchrew your tchroat," Meloni warned, his normally nearly non-existent New York accent thickening with the threat.

Dick chuckled, "So, you were about to tell me where this new costumed _freak_ was spotted?"

"Fifth and Main, some tourists caught sight of a white cape and long hair on the tip of Channel 10's news antenna." Meloni scoffed, "Freaks all like heights, don't they?" he asked rhetorically.

There was a second where Dick wasn't sure he wanted to know. "Has she hurt anyone?" he asked.

"No reports of it..." Meloni allowed, "...yet."

"I'm on it," Dick announced.

"Are you coming in to the station or--"

"No time," Dick cut him off, "I'm heading straight to her last location, I'll call you with any further details as I get them." He cut off the connection before his captain had any chance of questioning him further and with practiced ease, threw a grappling hook at the top of the nearest building.

_'If it's someone else trying to fuck with me...'_ he thought viciously, as he practically flew across rooftops.

He cut the train of thought off before it would force him to wonder what he'd do if it wasn't someone trying to mess with him...if it really was Raven after all.

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**End Notes:**

(1) Dick Grayson, Blüdhaven Homicide Detective: So, my major source of information regarding _Nightwing_, **_Kysra_** told me during a conversation about this fic that while in Blüdhaven, Dick joins the police force there. I just thought I'd use that. I don't know how important it's going to be for the fic, probably not too important, but there you go.

(2) Captain Elliot Meloni: Anyone guess where I picked up that name from? I'll give you a hint: It's an amalgamation of two names used by the same person. (one the name of the actor and the other the name of a character he plays...)

(3) A personal plea: I wrote some of this in the present tense, as notes before fixing it up to flow into the story's tense. I did the best I could trying to fix all the tense problems, but I might have missed some that my eye just skimmed right over. If anyone finds them, could you (a) forgive me for leaving it? And (b) let me know where it is so I can fix it? I'll consider it a personal favor. Thanks!

**A/N:** Other than that, I think people like my comedy more than my angsty-emotion-ridden stuff cause **_Stupid Cupid_** definitely got more reviews than this one did...


	3. Part III: Raven

**A/N:** Expect another one tonight and then not another one until after I get back from the Bar Exam on Wednesday night. Happy Birthday, Kysra!

**Thanks:** Thanks to everyone for trying to encourage me after my little whining patch about the reviews. I didn't mean to fall into the 'review pity-party' bit, I was actually just a little surprised that people liked my comedy so much because I didn't really think I was very good at writing ongoing comedy. But I'm really glad y'all like this bit too!

Individual responses to reviews going up on 'emsscraps'.

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_**Estranged  
**__**Part III: Raven**_

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"_Past days flit before us; feelings, thoughts, hopes, we deemed were dead, all rise again, summoned by that secret witchery, the well-remembered though long silent voice."  
_- The Mother's Recompense, Grace Aguilar

Raven had no regrets. Not really.

Yes, there were things she would have preferred to have gone a different way, and certainly she had made mistakes, but she would never dare to change a one of them, even if she could.

It had probably been after her first week with the Titans when she had realized the essential truth about life and choices. For so many years, she had hated the way the people on Azarath had treated her, she had hated the choices she had to make while there, hated having to come to Earth and hated having to face her father all alone.

When she met the Titans, she knew there was nothing about it to hate. It was just another choice. Another stone on the path that made up her life. There was always good that came with every choice, every mistake, even if there was also bad and things to be sacrificed and left behind.

She wondered about those missed opportunities sometimes, she grieved for what could have been as much as the next person, but she cherished what was enough to help her keep perspective.

It was why, while soaring through the freedom offered to her by the anonymity of a big city, while savoring the eclecticism of Blüdhaven's various and sundry occupants, she was never once tempted to wish she had made a different choice nine years prior.

For just a brief moment, as she watched the ebb and flow of humanity from her high vantage point above the antenna of the local news tower, she considered whether it might be time for her to pull up stakes from her comfortable little town and find a niche in the big city again. Maybe not Blüdhaven, she couldn't possibly live in such close proximity to her _past_, but some other large city: Gotham or Metropolis, maybe even somewhere closer to the sunny days and warmer climate she was now used to such as Miami or Los Angeles.

It took her all of that brief moment to decide that although the large city had it's perks, Shaver Lake California was her home now and she couldn't possibly leave it. Perhaps someday she'd _have_ to leave it, and if that day came, she would accept it with as much quiet dignity and tolerance as she had learned to accept all the changes in her life.

_'But that day,'_ she decided and descended the antenna for the roof off to her left that sported an outdoor pool, _'is not today'._

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It was amazing how easily it all came back to her. The levitating, the listening to the pulse of a large city, the feel of her magic stretching and moving inside her.

She had repressed the parts of her that had always reached out to sense other people's auras for so long that she had thought she might have forgotten how to do it. It had taken her so long to be able to master the control necessary to be able to prod someone's aura, test it, graze it, without poking or intruding on it. In her home town she didn't need to reach out with her senses first and nine years was enough time for any technique to grow rusty.

Still, there were no steps on the hard concrete of the roof behind her. There was no sound, no flapping of a cape other than her own, no shuffling of feet...

There was nothing to precede his presence...nothing except the press of his aura.

Nothing except the warm, gentle tingling she would forever associate with Robin.

It was amazing how easily the memory of it came back to her.

_'I'm leaving.'_

_'Yes...of course you are.'_

She closed her eyes, but it only made the memory stronger. Or maybe it was his nearness and she could feel him come closer, she could feel her own aura reaching out to him, she could feel the tug of the bond she _thought_ she had cut and tied off long ago.

Part of her wanted to turn around and that part was at war with the part of her that wanted to fly away without turning to see him. She wanted to look at him, but she knew what she'd see. She wouldn't see Robin or even Richard. She'd see Nightwing. She wasn't certain she wanted to see Nightwing. She didn't want to see the hardness of his expression, the question in his eyes.

He had never forgotten how to mask his emotions from her, but she still felt the mass of emotion pressing against her. She couldn't tell what it was, but she could tell there was something. He _felt_ like Robin, but she knew that wasn't who he was and it wasn't who she'd see. So, instead of turning around and instead of flying away, she stood stock still, pressed her eyes closed and waited, with baited breath, for him.

For endless moments, there was no movement save for the breeze blowing through her hair and wreaking havoc with her cloak. The hood had long since fallen and her long locks played around her shoulders and tickled her cheeks. She knew he was behind her, knew he was close...close enough for her to touch if she turned around, but he said nothing.

And suddenly, she heard it when he turned around and started to walk away from her.

She whirled around, pushing her cloak away from her, quick enough to catch him take the last few lithe steps before stepping up onto the edge of the roof.

"Robin, wait!" she called before she could stop herself.

His whole body froze, muscles bunched, ready to leap, but he didn't move. "I haven't answered to that name for a long time."

She was surprised by the sound of his voice, so deep and emotionless. It was a different timbre, she knew that, but she couldn't help but remember the voice of The Batman. She took a few cautious steps toward him. She took a deep breath and lowered her hand to rest at her side, "Old habits."

He relaxed so that it didn't look as if he were ready to leap, but he didn't turn around to face her.

"Why were you going to walk away from me?" she asked when it didn't appear he would say anything.

"Why are you flying about my city?" he challenged, only a hint of some emotion in his voice.

"If you really wanted to know that, you wouldn't have walked away just now."

"If you didn't want me to walk away, you would have turned around."

She sighed. "I was afraid," she admitted, her voice barely loud enough to carry on the wind.

"Of what?" he asked.

"Of..." she trailed off, considering which of her fears best comprised the reason she didn't turn, "Of what I'd see in your eyes."

For a while, she thought he wouldn't speak. "I still cover them."

She laughed, and there was an edge of hysteria to it. That answer was the closest to the Robin-Richard she had known that she'd heard from him yet. "That never stopped me before."

He turned his face to the side and she caught her first live view of his adult profile. Her breath caught in her throat. "Nine years is a long time to keep up a skill without practicing it."

"You'd be surprised," was all she answered. She took another few steps until she was close enough to touch him if she reached.

Some emotion flitted across his face and she could almost physically see the change, the decision he came to, before he turned around to face her. "Is something wrong?" he asked.

Raven was staring right at his chest and she was too shocked by the realization that he had grown very tall to answer his question. She was not a short woman, but he was practically head and shoulders taller than she. It didn't used to be that way, she thought as her eyes focused on the symbol across his chest.

"Oh," she whispered when she realized what she was looking at. Without thinking, she reached out and carefully touched the tip of a well manicured nail on the beak of the bird. She felt his breath catch and she half expected him to pull away or push her hand away, and when he didn't, she grew bold. She let her finger trace the outline of the blue bird along his chest. Slowly, her finger made it's circuit, as if she couldn't be sure she really was seeing what she was seeing until she had verified it by touch. She had been so preoccupied by the expression on his face when she had seen the picture, she had barely paid attention to his uniform at all. And now, she was only just starting to realize that she knew the shape.

"Oh..." she breathed again when her finger had completed it's circuit. She looked up to his face. He was looking down at her, seemingly waiting for her. She raised her hand until it made contact with his chin. She let her hand trace the planes of his face from chin to cheek forgetting that it had been nine years since she had any right to stand so close to him and that even then, at the height of their friendship and kinship, she had never touched him this way. But the years had done much to mature her and while she had been an emotional newborn directly after her father's defeat, that was no longer the case. So, when her hands grazed the silky fall of his hair at his neck, she thought of nothing except the strangeness of the sensation, and when her fingers skimmed the hard line of his jaw, she felt more than just the high cheekbones, she felt the heat of him through the pads of her fingers.

She wouldn't normally need to touch him this way, despite her emotional growth, it wasn't like she went about grasping at every one she met and although she was more in tune with casual touching, it was usually more of a calculated move to comfort or of reassurance than it was an inexplicable urge. But with him, she was trying to merge two visions, two memories, two beings. She was trying to find the boy he had been inside the man he had become and it seemed that mapping the contours of him with her hands, much like a blind woman might, was the only way she could think to accomplish that.

Later, she would be surprised he let her get away with as much as he did, but in the moment, when her fingers slipped under the edge of his mask, she was thinking about nothing except getting a clear picture of who he had become.

When his hand finally reached out and gripped her wrist, stilling her hand, she jumped in surprise at the contact.

"What do you think you're doing?" he asked, his voice gruff.

"What's happened to you?" she asked instead. She could feel the tears pricking at her eyes, but she refused to let them fall.

She thought he might pull her hand away from his face, but he didn't, even though he tried very hard to keep his face neutral. "Why do you care now?"

"I've always cared," she answered.

He did pull away from her then and dropped her wrist as if it burned him, even through the glove he wore. "Yes, of course you have."

She felt the harsh edge to his tone, she could almost taste the hardness in his words hanging in the air between them and she searched for something to say but couldn't think of a thing. Or, perhaps, had too many thing she wanted to say to pick just one.

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**A/N:** This part and the next Part were the hardest to write because of all the emotion in it. So, I used a lot of music for it.

**Soundtrack:**

1. Asignatura Pendiente, Ricky Martin

2. Beloved, VNV Nation

3. The Bottom Line, Depeche Mode

4. Stormy Weather, Elle Fitzgerald


	4. Part IV: Robin

**A/N:** Alright, this is it, folks. The last part until I get back from the bar exam, anyway. I leave tomorrow. I get up at six am tomorrow morning to get ready and be at the airport in time for my flight. Thanks for wishing me luck everyone! I hope you like the second part to _The Confrontation_ between these two. It's not the end of the story, at all. BUT, just so you should know, this story isn't planned out to be a long, many chaptered piece at all. It might have another four or five chapters, six at the most. I haven't written them, but I know how it's going to go, so yeah. Just so you know.

**Thanks:** On emsscraps.

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_**Estranged  
**__**Part IV: Robin**_

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"_Circumstances afford me / No second chance to tell you / How much I've missed you"  
_- Beloved, VNV Nation

Part of him couldn't believe he was actually standing within touching distance of Raven after so many years. He couldn't believe they were having this conversation. What was more, he couldn't believe he was actually saying all that he was saying. He didn't want to let her wonder what he meant by the words he had been unable to stop from sounding bitter. He didn't want her to look at him with those eyes that could always pierce right through his soul. He wasn't certain what he'd hate to see more in her eyes: pity or disgust.

He wanted to know what she was doing in his city and send her on her way.

"If you've come for help, tell me quickly," he said, his tone once again no-nonsense and unemotional.

"Help?" she echoed, shaking her head. "No, I don't need..."

He whirled on her, "Then what are you doing here, Raven?" he asked, saying her name for the first time in the entire encounter. The suddenness of his demand left her momentarily reeling. She was different, he could see that the moment he had stepped on the roof, but nowhere was it more obvious than the way the emotions played across her face so clearly.

He should be glad that she had found what she had gone off in search for. He should be glad she was able to show her emotions, that she'd found some semblance of normalcy. He knew he should, but he didn't. It was all he could do to keep from feeling the betrayal he had felt the moment she had left him all over again.

"Shouldn't you be off doctoring in that one-horse town of yours?" he asked, his tone not unlike the one he used with villains or lowlifes.

There was a moment when the emotion washed over her face unrestrained and he felt the old fear that would come upon them at any show of emotion on Raven's face. It had never been fear of her loosing control, for they had always trusted her to never lose control around them, but it had been a type of fear. A fear of seeing her crumple under the weight of sadness or pain, a fear that rose from seeing someone he cared about suffer without knowing how or being able to help stem that suffering. He had enough time to feel his own reserves cracking at the edges, to have to physically stop himself from reaching out to her, but just for a moment. For almost as soon as it came, it was gone, leaving behind only the cold, unemotional mask he was used to.

"Of course," she spoke, as if suddenly coming to a rather humorous realization. She stepped back, just out of his reach so she didn't have to look up at him anymore, "Who gave you the right to know anything about me?" she demanded, the ice never melting from her expression, the anger seething all the more dangerously underneath her icy control. "What kind of coward are you?" she asked derisively. "To skulk about finding out information about me, where I live and work, what I do," she laughed but there was no humor in it, "you probably even know what grades I got in med school, you bastard." She looked at him and if it would have been anyone else, he might have been afraid she'd take a swing at him. "What _right_ do you _have_?"

He didn't understand why she was so angry. What right did he have? What right did _she_ have to disappear from his life for nine years and then show up and expect him to what? Welcome her?

"If you're going to ignore that I exist, then do me a favor and carry it through all across the board," she insisted.

When he was certain he'd be able to maintain some semblance of control to his voice, he spoke, "You came to my city."

"For a convention I had little choice but to attend, not because I wanted to," she retorted.

The Convention, he realized. Of doctors. Of course. Three days. She'd been in his city for three days. "No, of course not," he replied before he could think.

She whirled on him, "What's that supposed to mean?" she asked.

He didn't know how to react to her. She was so different, and yet not. If he stopped to think about it, he knew this was the way she had always been on the inside, only she had never shared it with them except through insinuations. Still, even if he had always been able to pick up on her internal feelings, he was still confused by her blatant shows of emotions.

He didn't know what he should say, but he knew what he wanted to say and for the first time in a long time, he went ahead and said it, "What it means is that no one forced you to put on the uniform, Raven, even if you didn't want to be in Blüdhaven," his tone was clipped with the effort of keeping the emotion out of it.

She looked as if she was about to say something and at the last moment changed her mind. "I don't have to explain myself to you," she decided. She shook her head, and appeared resigned, "And I don't want to fight with you," she said, turning her back on him and starting to walk away. She could just take off from where she was standing, but she actually walked to the edge of the roof, for some reason she couldn't even think of. Maybe because it was the way she had always done it, she didn't know.

For a moment, he watched her go, thinking he would let her. Then, at the last moment, he stopped her. "Then why did you fly around in that outfit where I was sure to see you?" he asked.

She stopped and turned around. Her expression, for the first time that night, was completely unreadable. "Maybe it wasn't about you," she answered. "Maybe I missed it." She didn't seem convinced and she knew she wasn't convincing him. She shrugged and she looked tired. She turned around and looked out at the city. "Maybe I just wanted to see if you'd come."

_'If he'd come?'_ he wondered. She said it as if she thought he might see a glimpse of her and not follow it. She said it as if she hadn't been the one to leave him. "You sound surprised I'd do my job," he managed unemotionally.

She exhaled and shook her head, "That's not what I meant."

He knew exactly what she meant. Did she really think she could leave his life for nine years and show up one night out of the blue and that he'd come bounding happily after her like some dog that missed its master? What right did she have to expect him to? "You _left_," he spoke, so low he wasn't sure the wind didn't carry it away before she could hear it. When she didn't respond, he wasn't sure if he wanted her to have missed it or if he would repeat it. Without really registering what he was doing, he took one step, then another closer to her. "You left _me_, Raven."

He was close enough to watch her eyes close and know she had heard him that time. Maybe she had heard him from the beginning.

"I didn't leave you, Rob..." she caught herself before finishing his old name. He watched her fight with some emotion she managed to keep off her face. "I went away, but I didn't leave you."

He hated that he had already said so much. "It doesn't matter," he dismissed softly. He stepped up until he was standing next to her, face out toward the wind. "That was a long time ago."

"I'm here now," she said tentatively, turning to look at his profile.

"Not because you chose to be." There was no reproach in his voice and he was glad of that.

She closed her eyes and swallowed, turning her head back to take deep breaths of the wind pulling at her hair and teasing the tears building on her lashes.

"You could've come find me," she said, also softly, also without reproach, but with much more emotion then he expected.

There were so many words he felt hanging between them, things he knew she wanted to say but didn't and things he wanted to say, but didn't know how. She admitted to being afraid of what she'd see in his eyes...hadn't he been afraid of what she'd see there too?

"And who would I have found?" he asked, turning to look at her profile. "Raven, or Rachel?"

She turned to meet his gaze, "Me," she answered, the one word seeming to impart so much more. She exhaled and let her hands fall at her sides, "Just me."

He saw the glitter of tears in her eyes and couldn't stand to look at her so he looked back out at the city. He couldn't tell her he didn't know who he was anymore. "It doesn't matter," he repeated instead, dismissively.

She nodded, "It was a long time ago," she echoed his earlier statement.

He glanced at her but he couldn't read her. When had he lost the ability to read her? "Yes," he answered. "A lifetime ago."

She looked away as well and sighed, "Too long," she added, "too late..." she continued, her voice lowering close to a whisper, almost to herself. After a few moments of silence, she exhaled as if she had been holding her breath for a very long time. "I go home in the morning," she announced.

Nightwing didn't know what to say. His mind wasn't blank, on the contrary, he was thinking of too many things and couldn't seem to pick the right one. It wasn't until he was faced with the possibility of her leaving his life again just as quietly as she had entered it, that the haze of conflicting emotions that had been swirling inside him started to clear.

Was he really that angry at her?

Did he want her to leave?

Or did he want her to say _something_ that would change _everything?_

He mentally shook himself. How could he expect her to say something when he didn't exactly know what he wanted her to change? Hell, he didn't even know what he wanted her to say. But faced with the blunt fact of her departure, _again_, he wished he did. He wished he'd had more time to figure it out.

"Home," he echoed.

As if she found the answer to a question he didn't know she had asked in his statement, she closed her eyes and it seemed as if the wind gently lifted her off the ground and carried her until she was floating over open air, just before the edge where he stood. She turned to him and opened her eyes, the glowing white of her power shining from them, the prickle of her magic raising goosebumps on his flesh. "Goodbye Ro..." she stopped and exhaled, "_Nightwing_."

Nightwing watched her go and wondered, "...too late...?"

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**Soundtrack:**

(1) Somewhere In Between, Lifehouse

(2) Extreme Ways, Moby

(3) Always On Your Side, Sheryl Crow & Sting

(4) What Hurts The Most, Rascall Flatts

(5) Estranged, Guns N Roses

And Especially **_(6) Listen To Your Heart (Edmee's Mix), DHT_**

**A/N:** I wasn't too sure about the way I ended this...And no, in case you didn't read my other notes elsewhere, **this isn't the end of the story!**


	5. Part V: Raven

**A/N:** Boy this one was hard to write...well, not hard, but...difficult. (That's the same thing, isn't it? Oh well, you'll see what I mean and the end A/N explains why.

**Thanks:** Generally: I love to hear what you guys liked in particular about any of my stories and why, so go ahead and continue doing that! It's like a drug to me, seriously. Individually: On emsscraps.

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_**Estranged  
**__**Part V: Raven**_

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"_Stroke of luck or gift from God/ Hand of fate or devil's claws/ From below or saints above/ You come to me now..."  
_- Stroke of Luck, Garbage

It wasn't until she was back in the warmth of her room, and her uniform had been discarded on the floor en route to the bathroom and she was actually under the hot, nearly scalding spray of the massaging shower head that she thought of something to say. She kicked herself for having walked (or, flown as the case might have been) out of the confrontation so quickly. So what if he didn't want to face her? Since when had she ever run away from telling someone what she thought of them when she thought of them?

Especially when that someone was someone who had acted for all intents and purposes as if she had been the one who had been in the wrong. She wasn't. She knew she wasn't.

And, she wondered starting to revive her anger, what was with the harping on the fact that she left Jump City before he did? It wasn't like she was the only one. They _all_ left. She just...

Well, yes, technically, she might have left him, but it wasn't like she left _him_. She left Jump and she left her life as a superheroine before, yes, but she didn't intend to leave her friends. She managed to keep relationships with Victor and Garfield and Kori. She even spoke regularly with Roy and Garth and some of the other honorary Titans. Hell, Melvin, Timmy and Teether still called her every weekend and came to stay with her most summers.

_She _didn't leave anyone. She moved.

What right did he have to make her feel guilty for getting on with her life? For doing something to reach out for her happiness?

After all, it wasn't like he had asked her to stay and she said no.

The Gods knew, if he'd asked her to stay, her life would have turned out very differently.

And as she turned off the water, she ignored the voice inside her that pointed out that his life might have turned out very differently as well.

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By the time she walked out of the shower she had worked herself into a fine state, remembering more than one thing she should have said to the ex-Boy-Wonder. So, understandably, she was halfway to the bed across the rather large junior suite by the time she noticed the cool breeze ruffling her hair. As soon as she did, however, she went completely still and her thoughts screeched to a halt, until there was only the tingling of another aura right behind her. If she had been thinking straight, she might have recognized the aura without turning around. Out of practice and half in shock, she didn't recognize anything except the faint panic of _'intruder!'_ before she whirled around.

For a moment they stared at each other, as if enthralled. Because she had fully expected never to see him again, the vision of Nightwing crouched, hands on knees and easily balanced on the stone edge of her balcony's balustrade, like some sort of predator, dark straight hair waving in the breeze and eyes fixed right on her seemed impossible and somewhat dreamlike. She had a moment, as her eyes grazed his form, where she was almost certain she must be dreaming, for only in her dreams might he show up as if she had conjured him. In her waking world, no amount of thinking had ever conjured him up before, after all.

And then, her mental lightbulb suddenly turned on, and she realized what he held dangling from the fingers of his right hand. Her eyes snapped to his and the startling crystal blue of his irises on her stopped her breath for a split second. As if he had been waiting for her to meet his eyes, he was suddenly moving. To Raven, it seemed as if a waxwork figure had suddenly come alive. One moment, he was perfect stillness and motionless and the next, he was all fluid movement with that gracefulness he had never lost and obviously only gained with the years. So startling was the fact that he was not only on her balcony but walking toward her, actually entering her room, that it took her a moment to react.

When she did react, however, it was a completely instinctual response and when she found the hard object in her hand, she threw it with startling force and not a moment's hesitation or thought.

Her hairbrush crashed against he wall as he dodged it easily.

"Get out!" she exclaimed.

He stopped advancing, but he didn't leave. Raven was torn between tossing her shoe which was within reach or escaping back into the bathroom and hoping he'd get a clue and leave while she was inside. She knew she could threaten to call security, but she also knew that it wasn't like security would actually pose much of a threat.

And it wasn't until the thought had occurred to her and she had discarded it as useless that she wondered at when she had started to think like a human? Certainly four years ago the fact she had her own powers to make use of wasn't the second thought that entered her mind?

For his part, Nightwing looked a little surprised and like he was trying very hard to make no sudden moves. It was just the way she acted around skittish kids or animals – or unstable chemical compounds. She tried very hard to stop herself from giving in to her anger and surprise and forced the calm that had once been so easy for her to portray but that she now used less and less in her day to day life. In her present life, it was the kind of detached calm that served her well when she had to deliver bad news or when she lost a patient. She had grown to associate that calm with bad things and couldn't help but wonder at the fact she fell back on it when faced with a maskless Nightwing. It was the calm he was used to seeing from her, however. The stoicism and emotionless.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, her voice calm and cool – controlled.

"I came to talk," he answered, still wary, as if he knew it had taken quite a bit of control on her part not to keep throwing things at him until he either went away or she ran out of ammo.

"I thought we tried that already?" she countered, a good dose of sarcasm leaving no doubt as to what she had thought of that attempt.

He raised his eyebrows and it drew her attention back to his bare eyes. Slowly, their eyes locked, he raised the mask in his fingers up between them. Then, with a flick of his wrist, it sailed across the air between them, toward her, so that she automatically caught it before it could hit the ground.

"Not like this," he spoke, his tone still cold, still serious.

She took a moment to feel the fabric of his mask between her fingers. "And what's this supposed to change?" she asked, looking down at contrast of pale flesh and dark material. She scoffed and shook her head. "The mask you wear goes deeper than this scrap of material," she said, tossing the mask away from her, waiting for him to say something.

Instead of replying, he merely stared at her. The look in his eyes giving away nothing, and looking no more alive than if he were wearing the whites of the mask instead.

Uncomfortable with those eyes boring into her, uncomfortable with the situation entirely, she let her frustration show in the way she dropped her hands to her sides. "What do you want from me?" she asked. "What could we have left to say to each other?" she pressed and she was tired. "I already told you I was leaving tomorrow."

As if she had reminded him of something surprising or shocking, some emotion flashed across his expression, too quickly for her to name it, and leaving behind only the trace feeling of emptiness echoing inside her. "You were here for three days," he said and his voice was as flat and empty as hers used to be.

Was he really pissed at her because she had treaded on his terrority for three days? Was _that _really what this was about? "I barely left the damn hotel for those three days," she spat. "It wasn't until tonight that I put on the uniform," she explained. "But," she added, crossing her arms, her eyes flashing angrily. "Do forgive my intrusion for so long," her voice and tone a mockery of politeness. "Is there a large fine?" she asked caustically.

He took a step toward her but stopped when she took a step back, keeping the distance equal between them. She exhaled as if getting control of herself again.

As if he were thinking very hard of his words and measuring them carefully before speaking, it took him a few moments before he spoke again. "I don't want to fight."

Raven looked skeptical, "Then what do you want?"

His eyes caught and held hers and it seemed to her that the something that had flashed in his expression was there again, in his eyes. She couldn't figure it out and was too tired suddenly to keep trying. He had said he didn't want to fight, but he couldn't answer what he did want. Why did he come to her now, of all times? Why did he have to see her like this? Reminding herself of her state of undress, she started to turn back to the bathroom. She wasn't running away, not really. She had only wanted to get out of the towel into some decent clothing.

Being in a towel hadn't impeded her arguing with him before because she had frankly forgotten that it was what she had been wearing in all the commotion, but when she realized it, she wanted nothing more than getting into something less revealing. It didn't seem fair to her all of a sudden (or, conducive to the equal footing necessary for proper discussions) that here she was arguing while in a fluffy white terry-cloth hotel towel tucked around her body, just barely reaching her upper thighs while he was in full Nightwing armor. So, she turned and started as calmly as she could back to the bathroom door which was still half-ajar from her recent use. She, however, got no more than two steps away before his voice stopped her dead in her tracks.

"Raven."

She couldn't decide whether it was a note of demand or pleading in his voice but whatever it was, it snapped some reserve inside her and the anger she had fought so hard to push aside surfaced like a wave.

She whirled on the balls of her bare feet to glare at him. "You have _no_ right to use that name _or_ that tone," she said, her anger making an icy frost of her words.

He took a step back unconsciously, but once he realized he had done it, he stood firm. "I just want..." he started, seemingly at a loss.

"What?" she pressed when he took too long for her liking. "What _do_ you want?" the anger was there in her eyes, in the clenched fists and narrow eyes.

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**A/N:** It's not really a cliffie because I'm going to update this tomorrow with the next part, I promise! I already have plotted and outlined through the end of this, so it shouldn't be long. The hardest part was this part and the next chapter because I kept thinking they should really be angry with each other and show it by screaming and yelling, but the birds just wouldn't cooperate. ((le sigh))

**Music:** For this chapter, I had to get some deep stuff, some emotional stuff...and some angry stuff. So...

1. Extreme Ways, Moby  
2. Far Away, Nickelback (Yes, you've seen this one on the list before, because it's THE theme song for this whole fic, really...)  
3. Through Glass, Stone Sour  
4. Somewhere Out There, Our Lady Peace  
5. What Hurts the Most, Rascall Flatts  
6. Estranged, Guns N Roses


	6. Part VI: Robin

**A/N:** I wrote most of this one together with the last one, so it was just as hard, but maybe even a bit more because I kept trying to get them REALLY peeved at each other, really like to the point where they scream and yell and what I got was...well...you'll see.

**Thanks:** Individually: On emsscraps. Like, tomorrow.

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_**Estranged  
**__**Part VI: Robin**_

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"_If you could step / into my head, tell me / would you still know me?"  
_- So I Need You, Three Doors Down

_'You_.'

The answer whispered through his mind like a ghost, a specter of things that might have been and never were. He knew he had missed her from the moment she had stepped out of his life. He had accepted that the empty ache he fought against in the few restful moments before sleep claimed him had her name, her face, and scent. But he hadn't realized how much he wanted just to touch her. To know she was real.

The word was there, forming on his lips, aching to spill into the tense, angry air between them, and yet he stopped it. She had been in his city for three days. She admitted to being there because she had to be, not because she wanted to be.

He might not be able to deny wanting her as she seethed righteous anger in her white hotel towel, but he'd be damned if he'd tell her that when she so obviously wanted him gone.

Unable to answer with truth, he found himself at a loss. He didn't know what to answer her because although he did want her (and he could admit that, at least to himself) and he wanted to hold her despite the anger that still seethed inside him, he also wanted something else. He had come to her room that night because the thought of her leaving Blüdhaven, leaving _him_, again without talking to her one more time had seemed ludicrous, blatantly wrong. Yet, how could he tell her what exactly he wanted from her when he didn't know what that was himself?

It was so much like the random day her voice had been on the other end of a random telephone call he received at his desk. He had been so surprised, he hadn't known what to say. For the first few moments, he thought she would ask for his help or say that she needed him. When it became obvious she didn't, he thought perhaps she had simply wanted to hear his voice, that she might perhaps say..._something_. When she seemed intent only on small talk, he had cut her off and hung up as soon as he could. It had scared him how much he had missed just the sound of her voice, but the woman who spoke to him on the other end of the line that day was not Raven. There had been no sign of her in that voice, the voice that asked him superficial questions about his job and his life and generalized questions about how he felt held no resemblance to the intuitive and perceptive voice he remembered. The voice that spoke to him _that_ day was like a pale outline of the Raven he knew she could have become and he hadn't been able to bear it.

"I'm tired of this Ro--" she clenched her eyes shut, and he could almost hear her mentally berating herself for slipping so easily into the old, familiar name. "You practically push me out of your life for daring to intrude upon it and although I tell you I'll be leaving again, you show up on my balcony but you can't even tell me what it is you want." She looked at him, and he couldn't even determine what it was in her eyes. It was almost anger, almost frustration, almost pain.

He didn't know what to tell her. The only answers that came to him were too close to truths he wasn't ready to share yet. "I didn't push you," was the only thing he could think to say. "You went away on your own, I never said I wanted you to go." He wasn't sure if he was talking about their confrontation earlier that night or if he was talking about another moment, years ago.

She scoffed and the harsh sound cut across the space between them like a knife. "Please," she said disbelievingly, "Every inch of you wanted me gone, I could feel that plain as day."

He looked up at her so quickly, that he knew the surprise must have been laid bare in his eyes before he could control or hide it. "No, I didn't want you gone."

"Then what did you want?" she asked, and smiled but not like she was really amused. "It keeps coming back to that, doesn't it?" she shook her head. "And I'm tired of that too." He could practically see the need she had to do something with her hands and he was surprised to realize that it was something that hadn't changed, even despite all the years.

Raven had always had a problem fidgeting. Oh, not bad enough that people would notice, maybe not even so bad that she would notice, but if were really and truly annoyed or frustrated or impatient, she would fidget somehow. Slight taps of her finger against the nearest object, picking at her own nails, picking at invisible lint, whatever. He could practically see the desire to fidget running up and down her arms but she held back which only let him know how very angry she was and how hard she was trying to control it.

What right did she have to be angry? He hadn't even taken on an angry tone with her, not once since he showed up on her balcony.

Suddenly, he couldn't remember why he shouldn't be angry. "You're tired?" he asked, his eyes raising slowly to meet hers. "Then why don't you just go, Raven?" his tone was deceptively low and calm. "Go back to your perfect little life in your perfect little town." He was surprised at the bitterness in his tone and wondered at how she wasn't able to feel it when it was so blatantly obvious to himself. "It's what you do best, isn't it?" he prodded, trying to hurt her. "Run away?" He saw the shocked surprise and although at any other time he might have stopped, he wanted to force her to understand what she had done, or the way it had seemed to him, even if he didn't say it outright. "Run away and pretend that there was ever a time when you were anyone other than Rachel Roth, M.D.?"

"How dare you?" she asked, her voice wavering with the effort of not screaming. "You fucking bastard," she hissed, "Do you have any idea how hard it was to walk away when I did? How hard it was to not come crawling back when I was lonely or sca--" she stopped, suddenly realizing what she had said and had been about to confess to. She exhaled. "I never forgot where I came from, I was never the one who cut off communication with everyone, Robin, I was the one who called _you_, remember that?" She took a step toward him in her anger, then another. "You didn't care what happened to me at all – us --- none of us." She shook her head as if she had mentally gotten caught up in some other thought and had to shake herself to get back on track. He might have argued had he had the chance, but she continued before he could shape the words. "_I _called _you_, and when I did, you couldn't get me off the line fast enough." She pinned him with her angry, demanding gaze. "But _I_ ran away?" she scoffed, crossing her arms and glaring at him. "Don't make me laugh."

"Oh, I remember your call all right," his jaw was tight with restraint, as if only the steel in it kept him from speaking more than he wanted to speak. "And maybe you can answer something for me that bothered me quite a bit," he said, deceptively calm and casual, "Why did you call me that day? Was it some special occasion I forgot?" He neared her another step and she apparently didn't notice because she didn't back away. "I thought maybe that you might have needed me, my help, for just a moment, I even entertained the thought that maybe you just wanted to hear my voice, but --"

"Why would I want to hear your voice?" she interrupted, her voice laced with sarcasm and maybe a little pain. "When you made it so abundantly clear that you didn't care what the hell happened to me one way or another?" she pressed. "Oh, wait, you checked up on me, didn't you?" she sneered. "You knew I was a doctor and where I settled, you knew it..." she laughed but it wasn't really amused. "What trouble you must have gone through to find out all that information about me!" she crossed her arms over her chest, a bit awkwardly since she was still wearing the towel, but she was too worked up to do much about it then. Instead, she narrowed her eyes at him, even the mockery of humor gone from her eyes as she continued, "when all you had to do was pick up a goddamn phone and I would've told you any—_all_ of it."

When she had first thrown the hairbrush at him and demanded he get out of her room, he had had a moment of difficulty coinciding the woman in front of him with the girl he had known. And although her words, her expressiveness and her gestures were _still_ almost alien to him, it was in that moment, when she glared at him and he _had_ to really look into the depths of emotion in the so deep amethyst of her eyes that he saw _her_. It wasn't until he saw her and recognition flooded through him like warmth that he felt the despair overcome him.

While he had thought she had changed too much and had morphed into someone unrecognizable to him, it had been easy to be angry, easy to push aside the fact that she was there, within touching distance of him and that she hated him. It was easy to pretend he more angry than hurt, more unfeeling than empty. With the recognition that she was still there, that this woman was exactly who Raven the girl had always promised to be, it was all he could do to keep from falling on his knees in some strange mixture of grief, despair, and gratitude.

"Why did you check up on me, Robin?" Some part of him realized she was so upset she hadn't realized she had used his old name more than once already, but he wasn't about to point it out. It sounded right, somehow, hearing her say it again, even if it was said in anger. "Did you think I might be going around divulging Teen Titan secrets?" she swallowed and some emotion came and went too quickly on her features for him to name, "_Your_ secrets?"

He didn't want to answer her question. He didn't want to tell her that he had found out everything about her as often as he could in what could only be described as moments of weakness. He couldn't tell her that he had woken up one night unable to sleep and had somehow found himself looking at her as she studied through the night from across two rooftops, careful of pricking her empathy. He wouldn't tell her that throughout the years he had grown more bold (or perhaps he had wanted her to feel him) and had been there the day she cried in barely contained joy at the cry of a child she helped birth. He didn't know how to explain why he was there and yet couldn't make himself call out to her, speak to her, call her.

When she had called him, he had thought...

"Why did you call me?" he countered instead.

She shook her head. Her voice, when it came, was more than monotonous, it was almost dead; "Because I forgot, for a moment, how _very_ far away you were from me."

He knew, almost instinctively, that she meant more than actual distance. He knew it, and if he thought about it, he might just know what she meant by it as well, but he didn't want to think about it. "So you spoke about the weather instead? You asked about my job? How I was doing?" he asked. "That was never like you, Raven, you've changed...you started changing the moment you left."

She shook her head, hard, and it looked as if she were coming to some hard decision. "I never changed," she argued, but the heat and derision was gone from her tone. It was dead and quiet, a shadow of the voice she had been forced to have for so many years and the thought that it was his presence that brought that out in her again pained him more than he was willing to explore just then. "I simply became more fully what I always was inside but had never been allowed to be," she answered. "Can't you see that?" she looked at him as if he had let her down. "I thought of all people, you would be the one to understand that the best..." she trailed off and looked away from him, unable to meet his eyes.

"I did know you the best," he said before he could stop himself. "I knew you like no one ever could, and I _always_ knew that the happy, laughing, caring woman that plays with the kids in the park and helps the old ladies in her small town by taking in their groceries or giving them rides in her car was always inside you, I knew that, but that wasn't who called me that day, Raven," he said emphatically. "It was some stranger, not even who I knew you could become, someone else entirely."

It wasn't until after he'd spoken that he realized what he'd said – _all_ that he'd said. He hoped she didn't realize the true implications of his words, but he didn't think it would escape her notice. He could actually see the realization dawn on her face like she'd witnessed some unspeakable horror and was only just now starting to make sense of it enough to become really horrified.

He saw her battle with herself and waited in nearly breathless anticipation as to what she would decide. He tried to think of something else to say, some way to stem the tide of the accusation that was to come, but he came up blank.

"You did more than just gather information about me, didn't you?" she asked. "You actually came to Shaver Lake," she said, more than asked. "You came all the way to my home and watched me," her tone was growing more horrified by the word and just when he thought she might burst into screams or call him some other nasty names, the anger seemed to crumple in on itself and when it was done, her face was empty. She shook her head. "Maybe you're right," she spoke, and it was almost a whisper, "Maybe it's been too long now..." she looked up at him and for the first time since the very first time they had met, he felt she looked at him as if she were looking at a stranger. "I don't think I know you anymore, either."

The mere fact that she didn't argue the point, didn't yell or scream or be coldly defiant and demanding he answer her twisted him inside the way none of her angry words or scowls had. The way no one ever had been able to get under his skin, her look of surrender undid him. And the way he had reacted to all such emotions lately, that she would give up so easily turned into anger at her purposeful misconception of his words. It occurred to him with startling clarity that she didn't want to face the deeper meaning of his words, she didn't want to question his presence in her town. He had practically seen her lips forming the question, _why_ before she had turned away from it and given up, deciding to go for the easier route and that made him angry too. He was angry at her for not asking him, for trying once again, to push him away from her, but he was even more angry that he didn't know how to make her face them-- how to make her face _him_.

"That's not what I meant and you know it," he ground out fiercely, the first hint of anger he'd shown since he appeared on her balcony.

She shrugged and waved her hand as if she were swatting at a pesky insect, "Whatever, it doesn't matter does it?" she asked, her voice a curious mix of anger and fatigue. "Just leave me be." She turned around to walk away but he was suddenly there, in her space, inches away from her back and she tensed the split second before his hands grasped her bare upper arms.

For a moment, she felt nothing except the current of his touch as it spread from the point of contact electrifying each of her nerve endings and making her feel as if each one had been numb before that moment. But then she felt his anger and his frustration wash over her and underneath it all, riding the undercurrent, was the warm press of his aura and the faint scent of lemon and sage she always had associated with him. She might have stumbled if he hadn't instinctively tightened his hold of her.

Suddenly, she was facing him and she didn't remember turning. His hands were still on her forearms, however, the initial feeling of electrical current fading and leaving behind only a heat, so she could only assume he turned her and she let him.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked. "Why are you bringing this all up now?" She glared at him but the anger was fading, he could see it, fading to pain and the kind of expression he had never wanted to see on her face after they defeated her father. "You asked me to leave and I'm leaving..." She turned her face away from him, letting her still damp hair rush forward to hide her from him, "Just let me go."

He could have answered any of the other questions she had shot at him. They were reasonable enough, but the fact was he didn't know the answers to them. The only thing he did know was that he wasn't going to let her go, so he said the only thing he could say:

"No."

And when her face turned to him in surprise at his simple yet determined answer, he lowered his head and seized her lips.

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**A/N:** ((hides and ducks flying projectiles)) Yes, another cliffie. I'm evil, I know. I'm sorry, but the pov of changing again, and you know that means a new chapter. I have the next chapter written...well, written in first draft form anyway. Or maybe outlined? Since these chapters are literally right after each other timeline wise, it's hard for me to remember how much I've written and how much I've just sort of outlined. But I know where it's going, from here to the end, so no worries, me hearties. Just give me some time to get it nice and pretty for ya.


	7. Part VII: Raven

**A/N:** This is the last one that I have written. It's NOT the end, folks, but it's getting there. I already know what's going to happen and have a lot of the chapter _after_ the next outlined dialogue-wise. But it's in the works. I promise, so this psuedo-cliffie will not be long in being resolved.

**Thanks:** Individually: On emsscraps. Tonight. (For both chapters 6 AND 7)

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_**Estranged  
**__**Part VII: Raven**_

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"_It's in this moment / Hold on / When everything has come apart / It's in this moment / Right now / When it can come together"  
_- Fall In The Light, Lori Carson

For a moment, her lips responded to the urgent press of his, opening for him and taking in his taste like air, like she would suffocate without his breath. From somewhere inside her, however, came the understanding that this wasn't right, that she couldn't allow this, no matter how much she had wanted it, no matter how much she had thought of it, and wondered about it, it wasn't right. She didn't know this person who was kissing her with such bruising abandon, how could she allow it?

So, with a gasp, she broke the kiss, and somehow found the strength to push him away from her so that only his hands still on her arms and her hands on the blue bird that so resembled her soul self etched onto his uniform touched. She was out of breath, her lungs, traitors that they were, apparently still under the impression that she couldn't breathe if she wasn't kissing him instead of the other way around. Before she knew that she had intended to do anything at all except fight for her next breath, her right hand moved entirely of its own accord.

Robin took the slap with barely a flinch, the only sign that she had done anything at all to him being the blossoming handprint on his cheek.

And while her hand still tingled in that near-pain sensation one always imagine will be less than it actually is, he remained inscrutable, his eyes unreadable as he stared at her and waited for something she couldn't figure out. He didn't even look affected by the kiss _he_ had initiated and that made her seethe.

She hated that she couldn't make him react, even by physical pain. Hated it so much, so completely, and suddenly that whereas the first slap had been instinctual and unplanned, the second slap was deliberate and purposeful. She wanted to make him hurt – react – something, but what she got instead was his hand gripping her wrist mere inches from his face.

For what seemed like ages, they stared at each other, and although she tried to summon up the anger she had felt initially, it was giving way to something else she didn't even want to name. How could he be so unaffected? Even she, who had been known as the Ice Queen for so many years had been affected by things, even if she couldn't show them, but from him, she felt nothing.

She pulled at her hand, but his grip only tightened and she knew she would have a bruise there. For a moment, she struggled. But when she realized he was barely exerting even a smidgen of effort to keep his hand wrapped so securely around her tiny wrist, she stopped. Struggling always had been beneath her and she hadn't changed that much. She stopped moving and made her face go empty as she said, "Let me go."

"No."

"You told me to leave," she reminded him. "To run away." She glared at him. "Then you kiss me. You push me away but you kiss me, all after you made it clear that you wanted me to go," she sighed audibly, and looked beyond frustrated. "I don't understand what you want from me!" If she had use of her arms, she might have shrugged or made some physical show of her confusion, but as he still held onto her right hand, she could only glare expectantly at him.

And just like that, the cold mask _finally_ broke and the steel blue of his eyes softened into some emotion like pain but she was too unsure of herself to name it with any certainty. And suddenly, as if a wall that even she hadn't known was there had caved in, the feel of their bond flared to startling life and she knew, without any doubts the way she never knew anything else, that he _had_ loved her and needed her—perhaps as much as she had needed him. She felt the tears well in her eyes at the realization, she felt her heart – her lungs constrict painfully and had to gasp for air.

She had never felt so much like weeping as she did in that moment, never felt so much like her world had crashed down since she thought she had locked away all of her emotions and hopes regarding what they could have been...not since the last time she allowed herself to wonder if he'd be there waiting for her one day when she came home.

She struggled to get out of his reach, needing to put distance between them before every reserve she had tapped out and she broke down at his feet, but he wouldn't let her go. In her desperation, she actively fought him until he brought the hand she was fighting so hard to free to lay flat against his chest and she felt the thump of his heart even through the suit. As if some switch had been pulled, she stilled immediately.

"Don't."

His word, softly spoken, brought her eyes from the contrast of her pale hand sandwiched between the dark glove of his hand and the midnight blue of the standard on his chest back to his face. "Don't what?" she asked, her voice so soft, she wasn't sure he could hear her.

"Don't go," he answered.

"I thought you wanted--"

"--I don't want you to go," he interrupted before she could finish.

When had he gotten so close to her, she wondered? She hadn't realized how close she actually still was to him until she reached out with her other hand and touched his face. Until with the gentlest of tugs, she was pressed against him and her face was raised for his kiss, her suddenly free hand tangling in the so soft hair at his nape.

Now that she had seen how he wasn't really as cold as he seemed, now that she felt his need, she hated herself for her cruelty. She had wanted to make him feel, but she had never wanted to see that pain on his face, not that emptiness...not when she had seen his face lit up with joy and amusement and happiness instead. And although she welcomed his kiss, he hesitated and didn't close the distance between them, his eyes on her unsure and searching. She wanted to erase that look away, so she attempted to do that the only way she knew how.

She raised her other hand at the back of his neck and pulled him down the rest of the way until their lips met once again.

In response, his arms pressed her close, his fingers pressing into the bare flesh of her back above the towel that had miraculously held on...

Until with a sharp pull, it came away in his hand.

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**A/N:** Damn towel...had to get rid of it somehow...


	8. Part VIII: Robin

**A/N:** Whoa. Nightwing really hates to talk in this one, but he sure doesn't mind thinking. At least, not after I prodded (read: threatened) him some.

**Thanks:** **_Kysra_** read this one chapter like 6 times (at last count). For that, she has my endless, boundless gratitude. She also helped me talk out some of Robin's hangups in this one since he was being such a pri-er-difficult about talking to me for this chapter. Individually: On emsscraps. Tonight.

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_**Estranged  
**__**Part VIII: Robin**_

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"_A kiss can be a comma, a question mark or an exclamation point."  
_- Mistinguett (Jeanne Bourgeois)

It was the feel of the slightly damp terry cloth clutched in his hand that made him break the kiss. To his credit, rather than gazing at the result of his surprising act, he kept his eyes focused right on her shocked wide eyes.

The seconds ticked by and still they stared at each other. His hand clenched on the towel, fisting around the cloth that he knew smelled of her and he waited, searching her eyes for some sign even he couldn't name. Some permission he didn't know how to put words to. He wished she would speak, yell at him or demand to know why he'd done what he'd done, or even slap him again.

When the shock wore off, however, what replaced it in her eyes surprised him.

Doubt.

What the hell did she have to doubt?

Could she possibly doubt how much he wanted her after that kiss? Could she doubt what it was he was trying to figure out how to ask her permission to start?

Before he could figure out either the answers to those questions or a way to answer them, she misread the angry incomprehension in his expression and realized, _really_ realized that she was standing naked in front of him. She took a step toward him and for a moment, he thought she might have intended to step into his embrace, but she reached for the towel still in his hand instead.

Outside, it started to drizzle in that sudden, annoying way Blüdhaven had and he had the inane realization that he had left the balcony doors open. And in the time it took her to grasp the towel and pull, he wondered what had happened to him and just when it had become so difficult for him to say what he meant to Raven.

Almost from the moment they had met, children still, there had never been the need for awkwardness or explanations. Though they were both wary of each other in the way only people who had been raised and trained to be wary of strangers could be, they had had some form of easy communication even then.

What had happened to that? What had changed it?

Thinking back, days before she left, their conversation had already been strained. He had often thought that she must have been planning to leave in those days. And it wasn't just their conversation that had been strained either, their silences, the moments they used to spend comfortably alongside one another, without the need to say anything changed as well. At some point, he stopped being able to read her, as if she cut him off or maybe he had cut himself off by not wanting to know until she told him.

They had spoken _without_ speaking then and from almost the inception of their acquaintance and although that had changed nine years ago, it occurred to him that if he only tried, he didn't need her to speak to be able to know what she was feeling. With that thought came a memory he had ceased to think of when it kept him from what little rest he managed each night: he had never had to _speak_ to make Raven understand anything.

He held on fast to his end of the towel. With new eyes, he watched as she tried a few half-hearted tugs on her end, and he knew it just the moment she realized he wouldn't let go. She raised her eyes to his from mere inches away and the frustration and annoyance warred with embarrasment and doubt. He could almost physically feel her push the less desirable, weak emotions away by clutching at anger and pain.

When he offered her back nothing but peaceful, waiting eyes, she started and almost let go of the towel. He thought for a moment that she might have realized she could just run away back to the bathroom to get away from him, but she didn't run away. Instead, she _looked_ at him. Really looked at him and with that look, her walls came down and even though he was still looking only in her eyes, he could suddenly see every inch of her.

She questioned his motives, his intentions, his emotions with that stare, asked him why it took him so long and what he was waiting for – _had_ _been_ waiting for. And for the first time ever he realized how _very_ long she had been waiting--for _him_.

When he realized all the time they'd lost, it was all he could do to not crush her to him, all he could do to gently pull on the towel they both had clutched in their fists until she walked the last few inches to stand toe to toe with him, close enough to feel the heat from her bath still on her skin, the scent of lavender that clung to her hair, the warmth of her breath close enough to graze his exposed neck.

All he could do to caress her shoulder, the line of her back, the curve of her neck, the swell of her cheek instead of holding onto her tight enough to make certain she couldn't leave.

He used every bit of restraint in his considerable arsenal to keep his touch light and although he released his own hold of the towel in order to make use of both hands in his careful exploration, his eyes remained on hers and he waited. He waited for the doubt to leave, the anger to fade away, for the look that would grant him the right to feel more, see more, _do_ more to enter her eyes, not from an overabundance of passion, but of a choice.

He knew what he wanted now: He wanted her, yes. But it was more than that. He wanted her to choose to give herself to his touch, to choose to stay in his arms. To choose him.

And so he touched her softly, exploring the planes and valleys of her flesh in awed reverence, his gaze locked on hers. But it wasn't until he felt her shudder under his fingers, her breath catching in her throat that he had his answer as he felt the weight of their bond crash into him in ways he had never experienced before, even at the height of their friendship.

It wasn't until then that he surrendered to his own need to taste her again.

And it wasn't until he had gripped her under her arms to lift her the last few inches up to his greedy reach that her own arms wrapped around his neck.

The towel, for its part, fell limply to the floor.

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Watching Raven sleep was like being 17 again. It was as if time had not passed and nothing had changed. Although the Raven he had made love to less than an hour earlier had been open and expressive in each of her emotions, from pleasure to anger and in so being had been so strange and alien, this Raven her face relaxed in such peaceful lines was as familiar to him as the lines of his palm. Raven had always looked so settled as she slept, even before her father's defeat, even while she had to keep her emotions on such a tight leash, that upon seeing her in such a way again, he could almost belive the last nine years had never happened.

Not that he had been all that familiar with her sleeping form while they lived together in Jump City. He had, on occassion, had cause to assure himself that she was safe in her bed and the sight of her against her pillow, the stoicism so prevalent to her features back then eased away by slumber was a sight he had cherished, even then.

He had never had the right to touch her then, to hold her tight against himself and let her heartbeat lull him to sleep. He had never even dared to touch the strands of purple that rested against her pillow _then_.

Nine years later, he found himself sitting next to her on the bed as she slept, aching to touch her, knowing that he could, but wondering if he should. He knew, after everything they had just shared, that he _could_ reach out and touch her, push her hair back from where it fell half covering the left side of her face, run his fingers down the inside of her arm where it sprawled over her head. He could wake her up with kisses _or more_.

She had fallen asleep from pure necessity, unable to remain awake despite her attempts to the contrary. When he watched her fall into a light sleep, he had contemplated waking her then, perfectly willing to take up right where they had left off, but he had decided to let her rest. And really, that had been his mistake. For letting her rest had given him time to think and even though he _wanted_ to explore other depths of pleasure with her, he _wanted_ to keep it physical between them, now that he had time to think about it, he could no longer deny that the deep desire inside his every pore wanted nothing more than to curl up around her warmth.

He had a feeling he would never sleep as well as he would in her arms. He was a light sleeper by nature, always had been, even while still a child, but he had a feeling that he would sleep soundly and deeply with her scent to calm him, the steady rhythm of her breathing to lull him, and her arms to warm him. He knew it, with the kind of conviction he usually reserved for scientific fact.

He knew it and it scared the crap out of him.

Lust, passion, desire--those he could deal with, he knew what to do with those and could identify them. He knew they were transitory at best, he knew how easily sated or distracted they could be. He could deal with wanting her physically, even though he was surprised by how much he _still_ wanted her even after what would have normally sated him with someone else.

But the intense need to feel her in his arms, against his skin, as totally detached from lust or desire--that utter conviction that even just to feel her breathing next to him was enough, _that_ was completely incomprehensible to him.

For a moment, he wondered what he was still doing there. Why hadn't he dressed and left her room as soon as she fell asleep? At no time during the night had she said she would stay or that things had changed between them. A part of him knew that whatever it was that had happened between them, it was 9 years too late and maybe not even enough. What had they settled? Nothing.

There was all likelihood that she had every intention of checking out of the hotel come morning and go back to her perfect little life in her perfect little town without a thought to what had or might have been.

He could leave. She might even thank him for it. She might expect it. And although he wanted nothing so much as to surrender to the need for sleep at her side, it wasn't for that reason that he crawled back under the covers, shifting as gently as possible so as not to wake her until the line of his body was pressed along behind hers.

It occurred to him as she shifted, allowing him to slip his arm under her head, rubbing her nose against the warm flesh on the inside that he knew exactly how right and comfortable he would feel sleeping next to her. Even such a stark realization couldn't make him move, however, not when she, getting comfortable with the feel of him at her back, drew his arm at her waist up to rest at her chest, their fingers entwining. And although he didn't dare give It voice, he allowed himself to recognize its presence.

And as she sighed, pressing back into his warmth, he knew he stayed _because_ they had lost so much time already and because they hadn't settled anything at all.

There was another reason why he had stayed, however, but he didn't give it shape in his consciousness until just the moment when he found the perfect spot pressed against her hair and he was warm and lethargic. In that moment when he was drifting into sleep, he could not deny it:

He just hadn't been ready to let her go.

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**Songs for Inspiration:**

1. Bed of Roses, Bon Jovi  
2. Pero Te Extrano, Andrea Bocelli  
3. Through Glass, Stone Sour  
4. Listen to Your Heart, DHT  
5. Always On Your Side, Sheryl Crow & Sting  
6. Everytime, Britney Spears  
7. Boom Boom Ba, Metisse  
8. The Bottom Line, Depeche Mode  
9. Estranged, Guns N Roses


	9. Part IX: Raven

**A/N:** Not too long, but BOY did it feel long when I was writing it! I started this out like three different ways and went through various fights with my Inner!Raven as well as with my muse as to what some of the realizations should be in this chapter...

All I can say, is bare with me...the next one is MUCH better.

**Thanks:** General thanks on 'emsscraps' as always. Special thanks to **_GuardianKysra_** for her quote choosing help, her support about the chapter and general plot-beta-work. As always. ((wink))

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_**Estranged  
**__**Part IX: Raven**_

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"_I don't want to leave you/ Even though I have to. / I don't want to love you. / Oh, I still do."  
_- I Still Do, The Cranberries

The sight of Richard, long lashes curled against his cheeks, his face relaxed in sleep, strands of his jet black hair over his forehead was shocking to say the least. Oh, she well remembered what had brought him there and especially remembered fighting off sleep for as long as she could, thinking that when she woke, the night would be over and he'd be gone.

She remembered his tenderness laced with desperation, she remembered the look of utter focus in his eyes as he did things to her she had never even read about in her medical journals. She remembered how shocked she was, even amidst the passion, at the look of yearning in his eyes as he finally succumbed to his own pleasure. She remembered caressing his face then and wishing she had the words to ask questions he would never answer anyway.

She remembered, and would probably never forget.

She wasn't shocked because she didn't remember _why_ he had been in her bed that night; she was stunned as to why he was _still_ in her bed at all.

He slept on his back, the way he always had. His face, however, was turned toward her and his left arm stretched out under her pillow, his right arm laying against his bare chest, almost touching the place where the disheveled blankets started at his hips. She wanted nothing so much as to touch him. She didn't dare move lest she wake him but wasn't sure if it was because she didn't want to face him or didn't want to chance him leaving.

And that thought, more than any other, prompted her to sit up, very carefully, and slide out from the bed. She ran her hands through her tousled hair in a nervous gesture and stared at him from three feet away. She was naked, but she didn't really notice. She was trying to decide what to do. She wanted to stay so much that she actually considered dressing and walking out, checking out earlier and catching an earlier flight. She looked around the room, visually spotting her suitcases, purse, the clothes she had laid out for that day among their discarded uniforms, the extra pillows where they had fallen over the side of the bed, the black scrap of his mask where it had fallen forgotten after she'd thrown it. She mentally worked through how to get her bags into the hallway and considered calling for the bellhops from her cellphone.

She knew she wouldn't get away without waking him. He might _look_ like Richard, but he was still Nightwing and she knew there was no way she could move around so much and not wake Nightwing. He might not stop her, but she couldn't seem to forget the words he had spoken, couldn't forget his accusations that she had run away--

She would _not_ run away.

She couldn't lay back down with him, however, not and keep from touching him and if she touched him, she would be lost. She knew that. And if she stayed anywhere where she could see him, she wouldn't be able to resist. So she compromised. She found the sleepshirt and underwear she had laid out to wear after her shower the night before and forced herself to walk to the bathroom. Her eyes fell on the towel she had used after her shower the night before and hurried away before she could think on it too much.

_xxxxxxxxx_

Rachel dated.

Not often, and certainly not recently, but she had dated. She had lost her virginity at age 20 not because she had felt oh-so-passionate about her lover, but because it seemed like the thing to do. She hadn't been disappointed, she had even enjoyed herself. But how could she imagine how pale all of her other experiences would be after the passion she had known that night?

No one she had ever met had measured up to him even before she knew what he tasted like, what his kiss felt like, how warm it was in his arms. _'Now,'_ she wondered as she turned on the shower and glanced at herself in the rapidly fogging mirror, _'How hard is it going to be to get over him now that I have the memory of this night to look back on?'_

Her reflection had no answer for her and she closed her eyes to avoid the answer that was trying to come to her conscious. She didn't want to think about the what ifs. She wouldn't.

She wouldn't even think about what would happen if he woke up while she was in the shower. Would he leave then? Would he wake up and realize he'd fallen asleep? Would he come into the bathroom to join her?

She frowned as she dipped her head under the strong hot spray of water, closing her eyes and focusing on _not_ thinking at all.

But it seemed her skin was still sensitized and the fall of the water traveling the planes of her skin ghosted his touch in her memory and she found herself pushing against the cream tile to keep her balance at the memory.

She saw his eyes behind her closed eyelids and try as she might to put any of what had happened between them out of her mind, the one thing she could not keep from seeing was the look in his eyes as he braced himself over her and met her eyes unerringly.

She loved him, she always had and she had never tried to deny it even to herself. From time to time, she had managed to forget--not that she loved him, not really, but more like she had managed to forget that love existed at all.

So this heavy feeling in her chest was not new, not unexpected, not shocking.

What _was_ shocking was what she had seen in his eyes, what she had felt coming from him in waves but had never even had a clue of before: he had loved her.

Maybe, he still did.

All those years she had waited for him to come after her, charging into her life she had never dared to hope that it would be love that brought him. She had been content to think that he might come for her because he missed her friendship, her companionship and that had been enough. There had been heartbreak in her acceptance of the certainty that he wasn't coming for her after all. Heartbreak that had taken her long hours pretending everything was alright to heal. But the pain she felt then was nothing to the pain that bubbled up inside her at the knowledge that he _had_ loved her, all those years, and even before she left--

He had loved her.

She didn't doubt it now, but the knowing of it was worse than the thinking he had simply forgotten her.

She wasn't certain what hurt more, thinking that he had simply forgotten her or knowing that he had loved her, but not enough.

Knowing he had loved her set in hard relief how different things could have been, it highlighted the path not taken which she had tried so very hard to pretend she hadn't wished for. Now she knew all that they had missed, knew that if it hadn't been for their stubbornness, they might have had a happily ever after. And she also knew that whatever love he had felt for her, it wasn't enough for him to come after her anyway.

Still, when she cried as the rapidly cooling spray of water beat down on her head and shoulders, it wasn't so much for what was past, but because she knew that none of it really mattered now. She knew that all those words they couldn't say the night before, the issues that had loomed so large and imposing didn't matter. She knew too that her loving him still didn't matter. Knew that even if he loved her now, that wouldn't matter either.

None of it mattered because she knew that regardless of how much she might want to stay with him, even if he asked and even if she stayed, she'd never really be happy in Blüdhaven. And she knew that Nightwing was a part of Richard and as much as Nightwing was needed in Blüdhaven, he wasn't needed in Shaver Lake. And Richard would never let Nightwing go, anyway, even if she ever asked him, which she could never do.

They were too far from each other and ultimately...

It was just too late.

Too late for love to fix it, too late for more than the one night...

Too late for them.

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**A/N:** Don't hate me. I can only say that it's not over yet. (It's close to being over, but not yet...)The next chapter will be very good, I promise. And I did sort of warn you guys that it would be angst-filled. But stick it out with me guys and you won't be disappointed, I promise! The next chapter will also include the scene that **_GuardianKysra_** originally told me she wanted me to write. (And it's only taken me nine chapters to get there! Heh.)


	10. Part X: Robin

**A/N:** Okay...so, it's been just over two months since I've updated this baby. Sorry. As you can see, this is a pretty long chapter and a lot of things happen in it. Truthfully, the only reason you're getting it today is because Kysra is recovering from surgery and I promised I'd have it posted by today for her. So, here you go, Kysra! Posting it later than I thought I would be posting it, but it is Saturday, right?

**Thanks:** On 'emsscraps' probably tomorrow. (Maybe tonight if I don't go a-visitin', which is entirely possible...)

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

_**Estranged  
**__**Part X: Robin**_

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

"_I don't know how you're s'posed / To find me lately / And what more could you ask from me / How could you say that I never needed you / When you took everything / Said you took everything / from me?"  
_- Estranged, Guns N Roses

He had been conscious enough to register the sounds of the city outside for some time, but wasn't fully awake until he turned onto his side and inhaled the scent of her on the pillows.

For a moment he remained still, his eyes closed, and simply took it in. It didn't take a master detective to figure out that she was no longer on the bed. Still, along with the scent of her, if he tried, he could _just_ feel the warmth she had left behind on the sheets. He was perfectly aware that if he opened his eyes, he might find nothing more than the remnants of their night together and no trace of her left in the room at all.

_Why _would_ she have stayed?_

They hadn't made any promises to each other. He was still surprised that he himself had not only stayed, but _actually_ fallen asleep. He had never intended to fall asleep.

It wasn't a secret that he had had his share of one-night stands. He was quite familiar with the way that the game was played. Yet, for a moment, he wondered whether or not he was glad that she had left without waking him, sparing them both the awkwardness of the dreaded_ "morning after"_. He had never wondered about that before. Instead, he tended to be rather glad if the woman slipped out of their shared bed, and often pretended to be asleep and not notice. It was better that way. He had never felt anything other than mild relief.

So, why then couldn't he open his eyes and see the empty room? Why couldn't he face the evidence of their surrender in the hastily tossed clothing, the hotel comforters, a pillow or two that had fallen by the wayside? Would she have picked up the towel he pulled from her or would it still be lying harmlessly where they left it?

Before he had much time to consider an answer to any of those questions, however, he _felt_ her. Hecouldn't explain how, only that he knew she was still there.

She hadn't left.

When he opened his eyes, he didn't have to look for her – it was as if he had faced her unconsciously and when his eyes adjusted to the filtered brightness of the room, he was staring right at her where she stood, back to him, facing out toward the city on the balcony. He took in the way the oversized gray t-shirt fell far enough to cover just the tops of her thighs exposing her long, shapely legs down to her bare feet. He watched, enthralled as she leaned forward on the balcony balustrade, going up on the balls of her feet and the shirt rode up, baring the edge of her white panties. He swallowed and forced himself to raise his gaze to where her soft hair, still moist from her shower, fell halfway down her back.

How was it possible to feel the need to touch her so keenly, stronger even than the need he had felt when they argued? Would he have to fight this nearly overwhelming desire to touch her every time he looked at her, even after the kind of night they'd already shared? The kind of night that would be (had been) enough with any other woman?

Would he feel this tightness in that place inside him he had forgotten existed _every_ time he saw her?

He saw her tense and knew she'd realized he was awake. He sat up slowly, making as little noise as possible, half afraid to scare her into running. She leaned back away from the railing and although her hands tightening on the rail were the only evident signs of discomfort, she didn't turn to look at him as she once might have. That was more than enough to let him know that although she _had_ stayed, she might be asking herself why, too.

He didn't exactly know what to do. What he _wanted_ to do was carry her back to the bed and explore these feelings the only way he knew how, but what would that accomplish in the end? Maybe she'd stay another day and maybe it would be enough.

But, what if it wasn't?

And in the end, nothing they had done the night before or might yet do again changed the fact that when he thought about it, he was still angry at her. Just because he realized that she hadn't forgotten him, didn't mean he didn't wonder why she had changed her life so completely, as if trying to erase the memory of what they had been and especially how she had been able to do it so completely.

Richard didn't want to put on his uniform again, and since he had nothing else to wear, he stepped out onto the balcony wrapped in the sheets off the bed. It didn't occur to him what it might look like to anyone who might be able to see them all the way up on the 35th floor. He knew only that he didn't want to be Nightwing, not yet. He wanted, _needed_ to talk to her. He could admit that now. Especially after he had found himself walking out onto the balcony instead of out the door the way he had tentatively considered. He _needed_ to talk to her, and he knew, even without looking at the clock on the bedside table, that he wouldn't have much time left.

Raven didn't physically acknowledge his presence on the balcony and she certainly didn't look at him.

"It's a beautiful city."

Robin leaned against the cold brick of the wall, just next to the doorway and glanced at the city as the sun rose glinting on high rise windows and tall antenna. He tried for a moment to see the city as she saw it, but gave up after a few moments. He looked at this city every day of his life, afterall, and she was much more interesting to look at.

His breath caught in his throat as the still weak rays of the sun hit the planes of her face and bared the look on it to his view and as he did, for a moment, he felt the way he had when he was 16: young and full of hope and expectation. Since when had the mere sight of her brought such hope into his heart? She never _had_ figured it out, even when he told her that she was the most hopeful person he knew all those years ago how much of _his_ hope was drawn from her.

Had _he_?

Probably not.

"Only from a distance," he finally answered. He kept looking at her and not at the city at all.

"I suppose that's true of most cities, isn't it?" she asked rhetorically.

"Is that why you decided to settle in a small town like Shaver Lake?" he asked quietly, unobtrusive.

There was a moment when she almost flinched as he reminded her that he knew so much about her present life, but she didn't. Instead, she nodded. "My adviser in Med School lived in Shaver Lake when he wasn't teaching," she answered. "He helped me get a residence at the big hospital close by in Fresno and when I had my days off his wife would insist I come to the Lake to stay with them, so I got to know it pretty well."

He wanted to know more about this adviser, more about her friends, her study group, this family she stayed with, how her residency went, whether she had boyfriends or lovers—in short, he wanted to know it all. He wanted to know it all the way a jealous lover wanted the details of his love's other conquests. He wanted to figure out what was so special about this life she had lived that made it so easy for her to forget about theirs, or so good about this life that made her seem _happy _to hide who she was all the time in order to live it. He had to be careful of his words as he asked, however. Careful not to let the underlying feelings surface in his tone or his choice of words. "How did you end up living there?" he asked.

If she was surprised by his line of questions, she didn't show it. Instead, she looked as if she were having a perfectly civil conversation with any person she might have met at a party and not with someone she'd just had a night of hot sex with at all. "My adviser had a private practice down in Shaver Lake," she said reminiscently. "He retired from the hospital after my first year of residence and when I finished my residency at Community Medical in Fresno, he asked me if I'd like to come work for him in Shaver Lake. I chose the Lake and a year later, he retired completely and offered me the practice." She chuckled, "By then, the people on the Lake were so used to me, that it just seemed natural for me to take over the practice." She shrugged, like it was the only logical result.

Robin was quiet for what seemed like a long while, especially since he was staring at her, hoping she'd turn to look at him but she never did. He wasn't sure what that meant, if anything. He wasn't sure what he should say, either. It was obvious she was happy in this life she had chosen, obvious she was doing well and flourishing in this small town. And although he was happy for her, he hated it too. He was glad she had found happiness, and he couldn't deny how much he had always wanted to see her happy, but some dark, deep part of him missed the days when it was only him that could make her smile with any consistency.

"Happiness looks good on you."

She _finally_ turned to look at him and he felt something like warmth go through him at the sincere smile she offered.

"I'm content," she answered. "It's a good life."

It didn't escape his notice that she didn't say she was _happy –_ only content. Was that a conscious choice, he wondered? The Raven he used to know used words carefully and would have meant something if she chose one word over the other, but now? "Better than the one we had?"

Her smile faded and seemed to sadden, "Different," she answered. "In it's own way, even despite all the fighting, I don't think anything could've been better than what we had."

He nodded. She must have seen something in his expression because her eyes softened as she turned completely away from the view and leaned back against the ledge. "I didn't know what to say to you."

He looked up at her, surprise at her words and she mistook it for a look of confusion.

"That day, when I called you out of the blue," her voice faltered as she searched for words to explain. Her eyes kept flickering away, as if she couldn't look at him and it never once occurred to him that it might have something to do with his state of undress. "It wasn't out of the blue," she admitted.

"So, why was it?" he asked.

"I tried to come here," she spoke. "I got in my car and I got as far as airport before I chickened out." She shook her head and hunched down to lean on the balustrade. "I was afraid to face you."

"Why?" he asked, the tone to his voice betraying nothing.

"Because..." she trailed off and seemed to realize she had no reason to give.

At least none that didn't have her admitting to being afraid that like some sort of junkie she'd be left pining away for him no better than she had been years before, or, worse yet, of sounding like some love sick fool from some turn of the century romance asking him why he hadn't come for her. Now, she knew that whatever craving for his presence and friendship she might have felt before was nothing compared to the emptiness she will feel after having slept in his arms.

"Because," she sighed and tried again, "I suppose I didn't really want to know the reason why you hadn't called or contacted me for all those years." She looked up at the sky. "I _suppose_ I was afraid you'd take one look at me and either slam the door in my face or ask me in no uncertain terms why I thought I'd be welcome back in your life and hadn't I been able to take a hint that you weren't interested in keeping up acquaintances with me."

"I didn't --" he stopped himself before he could finish, before he could say, _I didn't leave you_. He noticed the way her hands clenched on the balustrade and he ran his hand through his hair, exhaling. "So you called me instead?"

She glanced back at him and nodded. "I didn't know what I would say, really, I guess I thought..." she turned away and exhaled as if she were measuring her words as carefully as he was. "...I suppose I thought it might be just the way it always had been between us."

"That was impossible," he said without hardly thinking about how it might sound. He nearly kicked himself when she flinched. "We'd changed, we _have_ changed..." he trailed off as she sighed. "Why did you think about me that day at all?" he pressed. "After so many years of silence, why that day?"

"I saw your picture," she answered, almost on a whisper. "I saw you as Nightwing and I--" she cut herself off and shook her head, as if she too were stopping herself from saying things she knew would shatter the tenuous grip of civility on the conversation. "--I got a sudden urge to see you in person." She turned and found that he had stood and was standing mere inches away from her. "Like when we were kids and I could just barely keep from running to you whenever you looked upset or worried," she admitted, the surprise of having admitted it obvious in her tone. Her hands curled with the effort of _not_ reaching out to touch him.

"You wanted to comfort me?" he asked, his own tone low and undecipherable.

She closed her eyes and looked away. "I suppose I did."

"From what?" he asked and now he saw it as she felt his presence so close behind her. He could see the way her body reacted to his closeness, the goosebumps rising on her flesh. He might be unsure of how welcome he was in her life, but he had no doubt about her physical reaction to him.

"I don't know," she admitted. She laughed and there was no humor in it. "I didn't even read what the article said, or if I did, I don't remember anymore. It was more about the look on your face than anything else."

"What look?"

She turned around fully, leaning her lower back against the balustrade of the balcony, watching as the rising sunlight reflected off the nearby skyscrapers in his eyes. "The same look you had the first time I met you – like you'd forgotten what it was like to have a family."

Something changed on his expression, but he was too adept at hiding it and she was too insecure to read it. "You pitied me?" he asked after a few moments.

She couldn't meet his eyes. "No," she answered, turning around again. "Not pity..."

"If not pity, what then?" he pressed.

"I don't know," she admitted, uncomfortable suddenly with the line of the conversation. "What about you?"

"What about me?" he countered, watching as the breeze blew the long strands of hair around her neck. He'd always thought she had a very graceful neck. He ignored the fleeting thought that he hadn't paid nearly enough attention to her neck the night before and how that was an oversight that should be remedied. The color of her hair had surprised him the first time he saw her in Shaver Lake. He wasn't quite used to it even now, but it wasn't the color of the hair that had always drawn his attention anyway.

"What drew you to Shaver Lake?" she challenged. "Morbid curiosity?"

Perhaps it was because his musings that he was distracted, and although he heard her questions and thought to answer them, he didn't think about his answer before saying it. "I wanted to see you." He was, needless to say, as surprised as she was at his choice of answers. "I wanted to make certain you were okay," he qualified. "I wanted to see for myself why--" he stopped himself and she turned.

"Why what?" she prodded.

"Why you preferred that life to..." he trailed off and unable to say what he was really thinking, finished by motioning the city around them.

"Did you find your answer?" she asked.

"You're happy there," he said simply.

She nodded pensively and turned back to the city, lifting her face to the breeze as if she could take it in better that way. "It's a good life," she repeated her earlier comment.

Once again, the word 'happy' was conspicuous by its absence in her statement. And there was, perhaps, something in her tone, something that reminded him of the days when he was able to sense when she wasn't telling him the whole truth. So, he changed tactics. "You changed your hair."

It took her a moment to realize what he was talking about. It had been so long that she dyed her hair that she no longer really remembered that it really was a different color. She took a strand of the silky black between her fingers and looked down at it. "Yes, well, I can't very well be a normal doctor with purple hair can I?" she asked. "I went through most of college with it purple, but then I thought I best change it when I started my residency." His hand fell away and she walked the length of the balcony balustrade, putting distance between them.

"Is it worth it?"

She turned and looked at him from across the way, "It's just hair."

Their eyes met, "I didn't mean about the hair."

She smiled, "It's worth it."

"Why?" he pressed. "Just because it's quiet? Because there's no danger?" He motioned their uniforms strewn around the room behind them, "Is that really worth hiding who you are, Raven?" he asked. "Repressing your powers? You obviously miss it," he pointed out, "or you wouldn't have brought the uniform at all, let alone put it on."

He watched as the anger overtook her features and he realized, too late, that she had a right to be angry too. "Because there, I help people who don't take it for granted," she answered, her tone, for the moment, even and steady. "Because as a doctor in my 'one horse town' I make a difference that lasts for longer than the time it takes some crack shot lawyer to file an appeal or pay a bond, or some deranged maniac to break out of jail." She looked at him, her eyes seemingly begging him to understand what she was trying to say. "I make a difference there, Ro-" she paused but kept going, "Richard. I make a difference and I can see that difference around me every day."

"You didn't deny missing it," he pointed out softly.

She blinked and looked away. "I can't," she answered. There was a kind of wry acceptance on her features as she looked at the city, slowing coming to early morning life below them. "While I stood here before you woke up, I decided I was going to be honest with you: no more hiding the truth and no more hedging away from it." She looked at him and in her eyes was the challenge he recognized from before and he was once again struck by how it sometimes seemed she hadn't changed much at all. "So, no, I can't deny missing the rush of power and the feelings of freedom I get from stretching out my powers to their limits," she said truthfully. "But then again, I never really tried to," she pointed out. "I always knew that I would miss it, but it was my choice to do it and it balanced out."

"Balanced?" he challenged. "How could it have balanced out? _It_ wasn't the only thing you gave up," he stopped to check his tone so when he spoke again, his voice was low and steady once more. "You gave up everything about yourself, Raven, you completely remade yourself."

When she met his eyes, he saw the pity there, the sorrow. "No, Robin," she said softly. "That's just it: I didn't."

"How could you say that?" he asked. "Look at you, you lead this life as if you never had another one, and to do that, you've given up a lot of things, Raven," he argued.

"I suppose," she agreed. "I did give up a lot of the things I took for granted as a Titan and the casual use of my abilities was the only one _I_ chose." He could see there was something she wanted him to see, to realize, but he had yet to grasp it. "But I didn't give up who I was," she spread her hands to the side, palms open. "I'm still me..." She suddenly noticed her hair in front of her eyes and pulled it away. "Only with long black hair instead of short purple and with a medical degree instead of a repressed attitude." She took a step closer to him. "And if the good people of Shaver Lake heal just a small bit faster than the average human when they come see me or feel less pain when I treat a wound, so what?" she asked.

"So you do use your abilities, but you hide it, how is _that_ worth it?" he questioned.

"Because I like my job," she answered, daring him to contradict her. "I like the people in my town. I like Maddie and Gus who have breakfast ready for me when I pass their diner in the morning and Mrs. Lonnie who bakes me banana bread every week, and Sarah, Mrs. Jenkins' daughter who has a cup of warm tea waiting for me in the winter and a cool glass of lemonade in the summer when I see her mother on my rounds." She inhaled and exhaled slowly, cocking her head to the side to look at him. "What about you, Richard?" she asked. "Can you say the same? Do you like your job? Your life?"

He turned away from her, "I didn't think this was a contest on who has a better life," was all he answered.

She scoffed. "You talk about how I've given up so much and changed so much, when the only thing I don't have now that I would want, I have no control over taking or leaving."

A bell went off in his head at her words, but by the time he turned to her and had realized he should say something to that, she continued speaking, shaking her head.

"My hair, my clothes, the fact I'm _showing _my emotions, all these things have changed, yes, but they're just superficial, Robin, and I thought if anyone of our friends knew that, it was you." She peirced him with her stare. "I thought if anyone knew that it wasn't that I didn't _feel _emotions, only that I didn't _show _them, it was you..." she looked away so that he only caught the quickest glimpse of sadness on her features. "I though you knew who I was, Robin, once upon a time..." she sighed and didn't give him a chance to answer. "Still...I know who I am and I haven't changed." She turned back to him, started to take a step toward him, then stopped herself. "What about you?" she asked.

He raised an eyebrow, "I don't have to like my job to know that I have to do it."

"Do you?" she challenged, but shook her head and closed her eyes, and before he could decide just what exactly she was challenging about his statement, she turned her back on him and continued speaking, "It doesn't matter, I know that you do--" she stopped herself to swallow hard, and he thought she looked as if she were swallowing back tears. She opened her eyes and there was determination in her eyes. "But you had to do your job before, too, in Jump City, and you didn't have that empty look in your eyes then."

"You got all this from a picture?" he asked sarcastically. Before she could speak, he approached her and allowed the predatory gleam to enter his eyes. "Do I have an empty look in my eyes now?" he asked mockingly.

She held firm and didn't step away from him, not falling for his bluff and looking at him as if she could decipher him if she stared at his face hard enough. "Something has dimmed inside you..." she trailed off and cocked her head to the side as if really looking at him, with more than just her eyes. He felt exposed and it had nothing to do with the fact that only his body half was covered and that with bedsheets of all things.

He shook his head, "I don't understand what you mean."

"It's like we switched roles or something." She sighed. "Richard, you used to laugh and smile, do you even remember how to anymore?"

"When did you become an expert on what I've been doing with my life?" he asked, an edge to his voice she wasn't used to hearing. "You speak like you've been around, but you haven't Raven," he walked away from her and absently tightened the knot of sheets at his waist, leaning his back on the wall again, affecting indifference. "You have no right to make any sort of comment about how I'm living my life, you lost it when you left."

She narrowed her eyes at him, "But you do have a right, is that it?" she challenged. "You have a right to make high handed comments about whether I've given up being me because you've spied on me like some coward from the shadows?"

He almost winced at her words and straightened off the wall. She runs away from her responsibilities as a superhero, from their life and suddenly he's the coward? He narrowed his eyes, about to say something, but was stopped by her warning finger pointed in his direction.

"You were a coward, Robin," she insisted as if he had spoken his thoughts aloud. "But here you are, and you keep repeating that I left and...so what if I did?" she asked. "I didn't put a restraining order on you, did I? You were the one that didn't come to me, even though you were so--" her voice faltered for a moment, betraying the true emotion beneath the anger, but she swallowed and the strength was back. "--you were close enough that all you had to do was yell and I'd hear you."

"Why should I have?" he demanded. "You left without looking back, Raven, you turned your back on everything we were and embraced this new life like it was what you had always wanted and like you couldn't get away from who we were fast enough." He shrugged. "So why should I have come to you?"

"Because you always _had_!" she exclaimed. She took the time of his shocked silence to gather herself, once again closing her eyes.

There were a few moments that she seemed to be waiting for a response from him, but he didn't know what to say.

"You always did, you know," she said, almost conversationally. "No matter what I did or how I said I didn't want anyone's help or attention, you _always_ came, _always_ found me." She opened her eyes and looked straight at him. "What was I to think the one time you didn't?"

He was honestly at a loss as to what to say. His mind was frantically trying to understand her words, decipher the meaning behind them. Had she actually been waiting for him? All this time?

"When I left," she started, her voice sounding tired, "I didn't particularly care where I was going. I valued my life because you all had fought so hard for it, but as to what I did with it, I was lost." She looked at him. "Can you imagine what it must feel like to suddenly find yourself alone at a crossroads, without knowing which way to go? Having no one to lead you or that you had to lead?" She shook her head. "Since the moment I was born, I was burdened with a destiny that I was to fulfill and my goal had been to prevent it. But when that was over, what was I?" she continued, as if she were speaking aloud. "I only had you – all of you – and when even that started to fall apart and everyone started to go their way, I was left with nothing." She looked back over the city and he approached her without giving it a thought and stood next to her against the balustrade. Almost touching.

The problem wasn't that he couldn't imagine what the feeling she was describing felt like, the problem was that he could. Hadn't he thought the same thing a million times? Hadn't he wondered what was left of him without the calm presence of Raven reminding him to be logical instead of hot headed? Reminding him what it was like to have hope?

"You had me." He clenched his jaw at once again having spoken more than he intended.

"You were already gone."

He was suddenly incredibly angry at her perception. How could she say that? How could she think that? "No," he said, for the first time since the conversation had started, speaking without thinking. "I was still there," he insisted. "I was confused as to what I'd be, I was trying to find what I'd be if I wasn't Robin of the Teen Titans," it was like the words were breaking out of him, and no matter how much he might want to stop them, he couldn't. "But just when I found what was left of Richard, you left and _you_ took him with you." He pointed to the uniform strewn carelessly in the room behind them. "That was what was left." He met her shocked gaze and resisted the urge of gripping her shoulders in his arms, "Nightwing was left and Nightwing doesn't laugh or smile and Richard has nothing to smile or laugh about." He was almost breathless and wanted to stop, but it seemed something he was unable to do. He did manage to break the stare, however. "So if it seems as if you and I flipped roles it might be because we did...because you took everything good about me with you."

Before she could say anything, he did what he'd wanted to do since the moment he woke up: he reached out and touched her, taking hold of her arms and holding her in place, as if afraid she'd disappear on him. "_I_ hadn't gone anywhere, Raven." He could feel her skin growing warm under his grasp and he resisted the urge to caress it. Instead, he looked down right into her eyes. "You. Had. Me," he emphasized each word in the hopes of making their true meaning clear.

The hardness in her face crumpled before his eyes, "I thought I did," she answered.

"Then why did you go?" he pressed.

She held his gaze, so close now he could see himself reflected in her irises. Her voice, when it came, was full with a sad kind of simplicity, "You didn't ask me to stay."

The words were like a punch to the gut. Would it really have been that easy, he wondered. Could he really have just asked her to stay? "And if I had?" he asked after what seemed like hours.

She almost leaned into him, but restrained herself just in time. Instead, she opened her eyes to his searching gaze. "You still don't understand if you can ask me that."

"Then explain."

"Why?" she asked, suddenly. "What does it matter? It's in the past, and nothing can change it." She looked beyond him to the early morning sun-lit sky.

He let her go and she almost stumbled, catching herself just before he touched her to steady her. He didn't know why, but he needed to know. "Please explain."

"I didn't care where I went then," she said after a while. "I didn't care because life was life, and it didn't matter to me where I lived it so long as --"

"It was away from me?" he asked.

She looked at him as if he had said the sky was green. "Do you know what it's like to feel like you're living not for yourself but for someone else?" she asked. "You say I've given up who I was, but the truth is that I didn't know who I was until I was away from you," she answered pointedly. "So, yes, it didn't matter to me where I lived so long as it was away from _you_." Her look of determination faltered and she leaned heavily on the balustrade. "But not in the way you're insinuating," she added as an afterthought. "It would be easy to let you think that I felt smothered by you or like I couldn't breathe around you, but the truth is..." she trailed off and hung her head. "The truth is that I felt as if I couldn't breathe _without_ you, as if I was living only because of you--" she made some sort of motion between a shrug and a shake. "I felt as if all of you defined who I was and when I found myself losing you all, I wasn't sure what I'd find."

"I never asked you to leave," he pointed out, half numb.

"No," she confirmed. "You didn't, and you can have no idea how tempted I was to follow you blindly wherever you wanted to lead, but," she looked up and met his eyes. "I couldn't live like that, Robin--" she stopped herself and shook her head. "No," she corrected. "I didn't want to live like that--" she stopped herself again. "I was _afraid_ to live like that." She swallowed. "I think I loved you," she admitted, suddenly, and without preamble. "And that scared me the way facing down my father never did."

For a moment, he wasn't sure he had heard her correctly. "You loved me so you ran away from me?" he asked, the first thought that came to his head.

"You loved me and yet you didn't come after me," she countered, a hint of her old unemotional mask present in the steady, no-nonsense tone of her voice.

He felt cold suddenly, and it had nothing to do with the weather outside. Some part of him wondered at how casually she spoke about love, as if she said it every day or regularly. "If you knew, why did you--" he started.

"I didn't," she interrupted. "Not until..." she trailed off and looked over her shoulder at the still unmade bed and strewn evidence of their lovemaking. "But it doesn't change anything. You still didn't come looking for me and when you did come it was just to spy on me..." she turned hurt eyes to him. "Why, Robin?" she asked. "Why didn't you let me know you were there?" she pressed. "Do you know how long I waited for you? I didn't need you to come take me away or come and proclaim your love," she shook her head. "I was happy just to be your friend, but you didn't even give me that." She looked at him, "Do you know how it broke my heart to think that you didn't come see me? Sweet Azar, Robin, I thought you -- "

"What?" he pressed when she seemed unwilling to continue.

"I thought you forgot about me."

"I tried," he confessed.

For a moment, he thought she might press as to why or question him about the fact he obviously didn't, but she only shook her head sadly and turned away once again. "So did I," she admitted softly.

When only silence greeted her answer, she turned back to look at him and they stared at each other for a few moments. Finally, she sighed and walked toward him. For a moment, he thought she might be going to him and his breath caught, but then she started to walk passed him into the room. Before he could think about what he was doing, he took hold of her arm, holding her in place.

"What?" she asked, grasping at the strands of her anger. "Why won't you just let me go?" she asked. "It's obvious this is getting us nowhere, and it's just rehashing old things we can't change anyway."

"I'm sorry."

She looked at him. "For what?"

He closed his eyes for a moment, his thumb tracing absent circles on the skin of her forearm. "For...all the time we lost."

"It's over," she said softly. He opened his eyes and let her go, not knowing what else to say.

She took two steps into the room, enough for him to wonder whether she would change or if she'd just grab her bags and leave then and there. If she went into the bathroom to change, he knew he should leave then, but he didn't think he would. He didn't want to.

He didn't know what to say to keep her, but he'd be damned if he made it any easier for her to go.

He watched her take another few steps into the room and stop. It seemed she was looking around at the tableaux they had left behind. Was she memorizing it or looking at it in disbelief?

"Why can't I walk away from you?" she spoke unexpectedly into the silence. She spun on her heel to seek his eyes. "We're not getting anywhere in talking, so why can't I just --" her voice cracked and she stopped for a moment, swallowing, crossing her arms across her chest as if to keep herself safe, "--walk away?"

The eerie closeness to his own thoughts startled him despite the fact that once upon a time, echoing each other's thoughts had been commonplace between them. He dipped his chin and suddenly, he was hidden from the sight of her by a veil of hair. He sighed and despite his better judgment, once again found himself being honest. "I don't know," he answered. He felt her shift and looked up, half afraid she was trying to walk away right then. "Why didn't I leave when you fell asleep?" he asked, meeting her eyes.

It seemed like they stood that way for hours, lost in the familiarity of each other's gaze, until Raven shivered in a stray breeze that lifted her hair in front of her face and broke the connection. "I'm sorry," she spoke quietly.

"For what?" he asked, brow furrowed at the suddenness of the apology.

"For all the things I didn't know how to say," she said slowly, deciding on her words as she spoke them. "For fearing the things I felt."

"I never blamed you," he answered. "I could never hate you."

"Even though you tried."

He walked into the room until he was standing toe to toe with her, and she, rooted to the spot, had to look up to meet his eyes. "I could never hate you," he repeated, softly.

He saw the intention in her eyes and the tensing of her body. She wanted to reach up to him, wanted to touch him as much as he wanted to touch her. "I never wanted to leave you."

"But you did," he finished, nothing but the blankness of understanding in his tone.

"It could have been so different..." she mused, almost to herself. "We've been so stupid."

He raised his hands from her arms to her shoulders, and further to her face. Slowly, haltingly, he pulled her into his arms, tucking her against his body, trying not to focus on how easily she fit there, how warm he felt as his arms wrapped around her, locking at her back, how soft her cheek felt against the curve of his throat as she pressed against him, and how her hair still smelled like warm lavendar and vanilla – the way she always had smelled.

They stood that way for moment after moment, only their heartbeats counting the minutes, and the increasing noise of traffic from the balcony reminding them that the world outside was still in motion.

"I have to go," she said inadequately, her breath ghosting across his shoulder. She pulled back, placing her hands on his shoulders and forcing his arms to drop from around her. "Check out of the hotel is today, and I still have to pack last minute things..." She started to turn around, but at the last minute, he caught hold of her hand and with a tug, brought her back into his embrace.

He brought his lips down onto hers and stole the rest of the sentence from her breath. When he finally broke the kiss, it was only to whisper, "Not yet," against her lips.

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

Raven dressed with casual efficiency in the jeans and button down blouse she had set out on the hotel room chair the night before--long before she had left the room in her uniform. She didn't bother to leave the room to dress, but clothed herself mere feet away from where he sat. Watching her was like watching a reverse strip tease, but he didn't stop. It was all he could to keep still and not reach out and stop her.

He was late for work, but he didn't care. He took his eyes from her to look for his communicator. He vaguely remembered it falling with a thud onto the thick carpet of the room as he took off his uniform. He found the blinking red light before he made out the shape of it under Nightwing's skin. No doubt, the angry red light was the sign that his captain had been calling.

He didn't reach for the communicator, he didn't even reach for his clothes. Instead, he watched her move about the room from where he sat on the bed.

He knew he should get up and leave. She hadn't spoken a word since the wake up call jarred them from the comfortable doze they had fallen into in each other's arms. She had slipped out of his embrace, even though he hadn't pretended to be asleep, stood and started dressing.

He had someplace to be, same as she did. It was time to get back to their lives. Yet, he couldn't move.

At some point, he had pulled on his uniform, but the act of it had been so automatic he never really registered it, too enthralled with the amazing familiarity of her movements. He should go to work, but all he could do was stare at her as she moved, packing away small odds and ends. Toothbrush, soap, lotion, shampoo. He watched it all as if he'd never seen anyone pack before, watching her hands in movement, trying, how she pulled her hair back away from her face as she zipped her rollaway suitcase closed and lowered it onto the ground, placing it near the door and beginning to pack her carryon with equal skill.

She ran the hair brush through her long hair, taming it and twisting it with a quick flick of her wrist into a loose bun, restraining it in place with some sort of hair clip. He was enthralled by the way the ends of her hair cascaded over the top of her head like a fountain of silken tresses.

"Was this a mistake?" he wondered. He wasn't quite sure he had spoken aloud-- not until she answered.

"No," she answered, her voice soft yet the complete opposite of timid or unsure. She turned to look at him, smiling although not all the way through her eyes. "No," she repeated, firmer. "I'm glad I saw you here – I'm glad this happened, all of it."

He nodded, and when she turned away to continue her packing, he spoke again. "At what time is your flight?" he asked.

"One," she answered.

He had two hours left. Less if he let her walk out of the hotel room without following her to the airport. "I'll take you."

"No," she shook her head. "There's a car waiting," she said, busying herself with her long overcoat and scarf, her carryon bag. "The hospital arranged it all," she continued explaining even though he hadn't asked for explanations. "And," she paused and looked up, meeting his eyes, notably _not_ looking at the rest of him. "It wouldn't be good for you to be seen with me," she said, vaguely motioning. "For neither of us," she added almost as an afterthought as she turned around to head for the door.

He was suddenly there, at her back, and she stiffened stiffened and sucked in a breath but didn't turn to him. She couldn't really, not without colliding against him, not without brushing against him.

"Stay," he spoke, feeling his voice reverberate through her.

He watched her profile as her eyelids fluttered closed and felt the slight change in her as she allowed herself to relax, leaning just slightly against him, making the space between them even less pronounced as her head fell back on his shoulder and his arms wrapped around her middle, pressing her against his chest as if he could hold her in place by sheer force of will alone. He watched her throat move as she swallowed back some emotion, or maybe her words, but her eyes were closed and he wasn't as adept at reading her expression as she had been at reading his.

He reached one hand to gently push away the stray strands of hair from her face. Her eyes clenched tighter and she straightened, turning in his embrace to face him. When he looked down at her face it was to find her eyes right on him. Her hands reached up to cup both sides of his face, her thumbs absently caressing the morning stubble of beard on his cheek. Rather than speak and break the spell, he let her explore the planes of his face, her hands moving from cheek to chin, to lips, to nose, his eyes closing as the lightest of touches caressed the outside of his eyelids. Her hands caressed his forehead with the same feather light touch, but his eyes opened in response nonetheless.

As if that had been what she was waiting for, when he met her gaze, she leaned in and pressed her lips, almost chastely to his. For a moment, he let her set the pace of the kiss and she kept it light and tentative—almost innocent. He recognized her answer in her kiss even then, but he pressed her tighter against him and deepened the kiss anyway.

When he tasted the salty tang of tears, he broke away, his own hands finding the smooth skin of her neck and cheek, watching as the tears fell from her beautiful eyes. "You won't, will you?" he wondered.

"I can't," she answered, her voice thick with tears.

He had only ever seen Raven cry twice in their lives.

"It's too late," he said.

She nodded and pulled away from him. She swallowed and although the tears still made her eyes shimmer, her voice was controlled, albeit sad. "I have responsibilities in Shaver Lake, people who are depending on me." She frowned. "I can't just leave that."

"You could," he insisted.

"I _could_, but I can't." she was confused by her inability to explain herself. "I don't know how else to explain it," she admitted.

Richard could feel the cold creeping back into his expression and saw the confirmation of it reflected in the deepening sadness in Raven's eyes. "You don't want to leave it, you mean."

It took several false starts before Raven decided on an answer. "No," she answered. "I don't. Not now." She exhaled deeply. "A few years ago..." she trailed off and shrugged. "But not now, not after I've made a life for myself in that city, Robin," she looked at him, almost pleading him with her eyes to understand. "I like who I am there." She glanced around her at the hotel room, and the light streaming in from the balcony doors, still open. "I can't be Raven the Superheroine again, I just can't." She motioned to the balcony doors and the city beyond. "What would I be here?"

"You would be with me."

Raven's face crumpled and she almost looked away, but his eyes held her. "Once upon a time that might've been enough."

"How could you just walk away from this life?" he asked seriously, the first stirrings of some emotion in his voice other than anger or sarcasm since they'd woken up. "How could you walk away from what we were?"

"Because it wasn't all I was," she said, hoping he would understand. "It _isn't_ all you are either, Richard."

He scoffed. "No?" he asked. "Then what am I?"

She lifted a hand to reach for him, but stopped before she could feel him. "I think inside you're still the same boy who cared so much for us," she started carefully. "The same person who took me in and joined my cause when no one else believed in me," she said. "The one who's hope and faith kept us all together, kept us all fighting..." she trailed off, realization dawning on her features. "That's what's missing from your aura," she whispered, almost to herself. "What do you fight for, Richard? Where'd that hope go?"

"Shaver Lake," he answered, his voice steady but his tone nearly inaudible.

She sighed and leaned through the space she'd carved between them, closing her eyes as her forehead touched his chest, over the bird insignia. She could hear his heart beat through his chest, but his arms didn't go around her again. "You don't need me to have hope," she whispered. "But I can't be a hero anymore." She shook her head against his chest. "I just can't."

"Why?" he pressed.

"It's not who I am anymore," she answered.

"Who are you?" he questioned.

She sighed and the warmth of her breath battered against the polymerized armor of his uniform. She inhaled, as if drawing in strength and shifted her weight, leaving the comfort of his warmth. "A doctor."

His expression, when he met her eyes, never changed. "There are doctors in Blüdhaven."

"Where I can practice the equivalent of front line doctor medicine, 'patch 'em and pitch 'em' and worry about HMOs and PPOs and everything that has absolutely nothing to do with medicine and yet everything to do with the practice of it? No, that isn't why I practice medicine." She shook her head and looked at him again, "The people in Bludhaven couldn't care less what doctor treats them, but the people of Shaver Lake need me. They depend on me."

_'I need you.'_

The words perched on his lips, but he couldn't speak them. She was leaving, what would his words change except make his need all the more real?

"I--" she glanced away from him for a moment, but she forced herself to meet his expression again. "I can't be happy here, Richard," she determined. "I can love you, but I can't be happy here. No more than you could be happy in Shaver Lake."

She watched him, waiting for him to say something or do something, but all he could think to do was stand utterly still until the desire to use brute force or any other persuasive tactic he knew to keep her there passed.

"They need me just like the people of Bludhaven need you, and now," she sighed and took a moment before continuing, "me staying here would be like asking you to stay with me at Shaver Lake." She hugged herself and avoided his eyes. "Our lives and goals are too different now, Richard," she said, almost on a whisper. "I suppose it's--"

"--too late?" he interrupted.

Wordlessly, she nodded and they might have stayed that way for hours yet if not for the knock at her door. She started, "The Bellboy," she spoke, almost to herself. She went to the door and didn't think to wonder about Nightwing's presence in her room until her hand was on the doorknob.

When she looked back into the room however, he was gone and it was empty of anything except her bags and the messy bed.

She let the bellboy in and pointed out the location of her bags. When he loaded her bags onto the trolley and exited the room with quiet skill, she turned back to the room and went to the balcony half expecting him to be standing in the few shadows cast by the neighboring skyscrapers.

"Goodbye, Robin," she spoke softly to the wind, on the off chance he was listening.

She closed the balcony doors behind her as she entered the room and walked through the room, grabbing her carryon along the way, all without once looking at the bed or looking back.

"Goodbye, Raven," Robin answered, dropping onto the balcony just in time to watch her disappear as the room's door swung inward and locked closed.

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

_**SPECIAL NOTE: This is NOT the end of the story! There is one more chapter coming and an Epilogue.**_

**A/N:** I have the niggling feeling that I either repeated myself too much in this chapter or like it was kind of boring action wise, but the truth is, it's a whole mess of dialogue, which has been a long time coming for these two.

**ORIGINS:** In THIS chapter is the scene that inspired the whole story. Kysra actually sent me an email with a description of a scene she could see in her head, and asked me to write a story based on that as a gift for her birthday. I spent some time thinking about the scene, and what I came up with as a way to approach it, required all this kind of set up. The scene? Well, once upon a time I had copied/pasted what she asked for in a document, but of course, I can't find it now. In any case, the scene is when Robin is on the balcony, half naked while Raven is standing by the balustrade and he's looking at her and behind them in the hotel room, their costumes are strewn over the floor and the bed is unmade. That was the scene. Out of that scene, came ALL this.

The bonus? We had talked (Kysra and I) about another image she has in her head, where they're standing and Raven is leaning back on Robin and his arms are around her from behind and her head is back against him so she could almost look up at him. I added that too.

I hope she likes the finished product. (She's been getting snippets of stuff from me during production.)

**PLAYLIST:** This chapter, especially, required plenty of mood music. I actually set up an individual playlist for this one chapter. Of those songs, the one that I kept playing on repeat during the final stages of editing and adding bits was:

1. Beautiful Goodbye by Amanda Marshall. (The quote at the beginning of the chapter is from this song...)

The other songs I had playing were:

1. Ne Me Quitte Pas, Nina Simone

2. Mine, Savage Garden

3. You and Me, Lifehouse

4. Ahora Quien, Marc Anthony

5. I've Got To See You Again, Norah Jones

6. Goodbye, My Lover, James Blundt

7. What Hurts the Most, Rascall Flatts

And of course, the _Estranged_ Theme Song:

Far Away, Nickelback


	11. Part XI: Resolution

**A/N:** THIS IS NOT THE END. It kind of is the end, because everything gets resolved, but there will be an Epilogue within the next few days, week at most. (It's mostly already written) So, look for it.

Apologies for taking so long to post this chapter. (Six months...hard to believe...this story's been around for almost a year now.) I focused a lot on finishing up the latest chapter of _It Only Takes A Moment_ which was a doozie and everything else just kinda fell by the wayside.

Not beta'd.

All other A/Ns at the end of the chapter, so I won't give anything away.

**Thanks:** Thank you to _everyone_ for all of your support during this angsty trip. I really appreciate all your words of encouragement and all your comments letting me know that I was on the right track. As always, to my sounding boards, **Absentia** and **Kysra**, who although they haven't taken a look at the final product, have been around in every step of its evolution. Individually to all the reviewers on 'emsscraps' later on tonight.

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  
__**Estranged  
**__**Part XI  
**__xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

"_Tell me what I'm 'sposed to do / with all these leftover feelings of you / cause I don't know._.."  
- Roadside, Rise Against

"_This time, This place / misused, mistakes / too long, too late / who was I to make you wait/ Just one chance / Just one breath / Just in case there's just one left..."  
_- Far Away, Nickelback

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  
__**Robin  
**__xxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

It wasn't the first time Dick had to change out of his Nightwing uniform on Blüdhaven City Police property and so although he went through the motion absently, almost automatically, it did not escape his notice that this time _was_ different. He had been late coming onto his shift before, too, and despite his griping, his captain was more pissed at Dick's silence as far as the 'costume freak' was concerned than he was about Dick's being late.

But perhaps because he was already aware of the difference in the routine, it was easier for him to notice how apart from it all he felt as he walked into the squad room of his precinct toward his desk. He glanced at the other detectives, the uniformed police, the office personnel, the easy camaraderie and although outwardly he took part in it (shaking hands with a fellow detective, listening as a Sargent told him about a ball game Dick had been right about calling the outcome of, and every other outward show of normalcy) Dick thought once again, as he always thought – however absently – how _different_ he was from these people.

He had always excused it, when it bothered him enough that the need to excuse it at all came up, on his burden as Nightwing.

But that wasn't right.

He _had_ been normal before, normal _and_ a superhero both.

He had laughed and joked with others and _meant_ it. He had felt real accomplishment at the end of the day, too. He had forgotten that for awhile, but Raven's words on her balcony reminded him of that and he couldn't seem to get it out of his head.

He remembered a time he had gone to sleep proud of what they'd accomplished, not just glad to close his eyes to the oblivion of an exhausted rest. He never thought of it until Raven brought it up, but he couldn't really remember the last time he had laughed – _really_ laughed. He had been honest when he told Raven that Nightwing didn't laugh and Richard had nothing to smile about, but he was only now starting to realize how very honest.

He told himself he had to be hard to do his job, but what had he become?

"Grayson!"

Dick jerked out of his thoughts to look at John Belzer, his sometimes partner who was sitting at his desk across from him. "What?" Dick asked, annoyed.

"Where were you man?" Belzer asked.

"Not here," Dick answered, forcing a smile and making it suggestive. Belzer wouldn't be able to tell the difference. "What's up?" he asked.

"I was asking you if you'd heard that Lester Buchinsky(1) was released yesterday, but I think I'd rather hear about what you did last night that put that look on your face."

"Buchinsky was _released_?" Dick asked, serious.

Belzer sighed. "Yep," he said unhappily. "On a technicality. Isn't that a kick in the ass?"

Dick leaned back. It had taken him weeks to track The Electrocutioner down – both as Dick Grayson and as Nightwing – and the fight that had ensued when Nightwing had finally caught up with him had him bruised and battered for weeks.

And he was out.

On a technicality.

"Sometimes I wonder if its even worth it," Belzer mused.

Dick didn't comment. He was too busy wondering not only what he had become, but _for what_. He felt very tired suddenly.

"That Nightwing guy must have resolve of steel to do this kind of shit over and over again," Belzer continued, rubbing at the space between his eyebrows. "Why do you think he does it?"

Dick was surprised by Belzer's comment and raised his head in surprise, wondering over Belzer's words. Why _did_ Nightwing do it? How long ago had he realized the truth behind his need for revenge? How long ago had he lost the idealistic impulse that it was his responsibility to fix the whole world? "He's needed," Dick finally answered.

Belzer scoffed, half-heartedly. "Is he?" He caught Dick's look and raised his hands, anticipating the argument. "Hey, I know we owe him a lot, man, I know that, and I know he's saved a lot of people, we all appreciate that, but you've gotta wonder..."

"Wonder what?" Dick asked.

Belzer shrugged. "What came first, the chicken or the egg, ya know?" he asked, tiredly. "Would we have metahumans causing problems if superheroes like Nightwing and Superman and all of them weren't around to deal with them?"

Dick didn't know what to say. He could say what he knew: that the Titans, for example, would not have formed if they hadn't been needed, but was that really true? If Raven hadn't come to Earth...but that wasn't right either. If the Justice League hadn't already existed, Raven wouldn't have come to Earth looking for help in the first place. "I don't know," he finally answered.

"Do you think he ever gets tired of it?" Belzer asked. "Nightwing, I mean," he clarified. "Do you think he ever wonders if it's worth it?"

Dick looked at him and knew the answer without having to think it and answered someone for the first time since he was a child without thinking the answer through, "All the time."

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  
__**Raven  
**__xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

Julie, her medical assistant, was waiting for her at the airport when she came through the gate.

"Welcome home, Doc!" Julie greeted enthusiastically, crushing Rachel in a great big hug, then letting her go before Rachel could do much except blink.

"Hello, Julie," Raven answered, smiling into the younger girl's bright face. She reminded her of Kori. Always had. The same child-like joy, only a lot less naïve. "You didn't have to come all the way out here to pick me up."

Julie pshawed and took her carry-on before Rachel could argue it, swinging it onto her own shoulder. "And let you take a taxi all the way back to Shaver Lake? Are you kidding?" she asked, starting to lead Rachel to the baggage claim area. "Besides, I only had to work for half a day," she winked at her.

"I think I'm too lenient with you," Rachel said, playing into the typical game. Julie liked to pretend, but Rachel had no doubt that Julie would be heading to med school as soon as she was able, so much did she love the profession.

"That's only cause you love me," Julie said easily. "So, how was the convention?"

Rachel felt her face try to form neutral lines, "Good, I went to the round table discussion with..." she trailed off as she caught sight of Julie's disbelief. "Okay, so it was boring," Rachel conceded, stopping in front of Carousel B.

Julie laughed. "How was the city?" she asked.

"I hardly stepped foot in it," Rachel admitted.

"Doc!" Julie exclaimed, lowering her voice at the stares of the other people waiting for the baggage to be sent onto the carousel. "How did you expect to catch a glimpse of Nightwing if you didn't go out into the city?"

Julie missed the expression on Raven's face because the buzzing signaling the commencement of the carousel's movement drew her attention and by the time she looked back at her, Rachel was back to neutrally amused. "I didn't expect to see Nightwing at all," Rachel answered, carefully neutral.

"That's like going to Metropolis and missing out on a glimpse of Superman, New York and not seeing the Statue of Liberty, Paris without at least glancing at the Eiffel Tower, Giza and saying, 'no thanks, I don't need to see the pyramids', Mexico and not --"

"--and not trying the worm?" Raven interjected.

"Fine," Julie scoffed, "Laugh at me if you want."

"Sorry," Rachel said, shrugging. "It's just amusing to me that you compare a man to one alien and three monuments."

"Well," Julie said, "He's Nightwing," as if that should explain it.

She met Julie's eyes seriously, "Under the suit, he's just a man, Julie."

Julie grinned mischievously. "But what a man!" she exclaimed on a mock swoon.

Rachel shook her head, smiling despite herself at her assistant's antics.

"And I'll tell you what, I wouldn't mind verifying that he's just a man for my own self, if it means a glimpse under that suit, you know what I mean?" Julie continued. "I mean, he's hot."

Raven couldn't control the blush from creeping up the sides of her face at Julie's comment as images came unbidden to her mind. She cleared her throat, eyes focused intently on the gap at the end of the conveyor belt from where the bags were emerging. "Oh look, my bag," she said, as her gray and black Samsonite large roller appeared. She started for it, but stopped before she had taken a step, as Julie's hand clamped onto her arm.

"Doc, look at me," Julie demanded.

For some reason, Rachel did.

"Oh my god, you saw him, didn't you?" she pressed.

"If you had to pick between Shaver Lake and living in a city with a man like Nightwing," Raven started suddenly. She had intended to change the subject, but she knew already it hadn't quite worked out that way, "Just living in a city with him, with all the crime and junk that goes on in that city," she looked at Julie. "What would you pick?"

Julie blinked at her boss and friend for a moment before realizing she was serious. "Shaver Lake, of course," Julie answered without question. She chuckled and shook her head, wondering at the absurdity of her normally logical boss' question. "Nightwing's fine, and I'd love to get a glimpse of him and I might just chance the shady side of the street if I went visiting Blüdhaven for the chance that he'd come along swooping in and save me, you know, but he's a fantasy, isn't he?" she asked. "I mean, he's _real_, but guys like him don't really exist all the time, and besides, no guy is worth moving away to a place where you can't be happy."

"And you can't be happy in Blüdhaven," Rachel said, not asked, staring as her bag made it's slow, laborious circuit to their side of the carousel.

Julie laughed. "'Course not," she admitted. "City's nice, but I'm not a city girl, and I couldn't stand to live in a place like Blüdhaven all the time." She looked at Rachel, "Could you?" she asked.

Rachel turned and glanced at Julie, but didn't want the younger girl to see all the emotion she knew must be going through her expression, so she turned back to watch her bag, "No, I couldn't," she answered, starting forward to be able to reach her bag as it passed by them.

"So, did you see him or not?" Julie asked as Raven reached for her bag.

Raven, executing a complicated imitation of a pulley, dropped the bag right on the floor in surprise.

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  
__**Robin  
**__xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

Richard turned from his inspection of the bookcase as the door opened, smiling at the ever-familiar stance of his old mentor. The man stood as if he weren't a day over twenty: head held high, eyes focused and clear as their gazes met across the room.

"About time you showed up, old man," Richard greeted him, the smile in his voice belying the seeming words of annoyance. "I was actually starting to be tempted by A Tale of Two Cities."

Bruce walked across the room in his careful, graceful steps. "Sorry I didn't have any comic books to keep you entertained instead," he said in his deep, measured voice.

Richard smirked, "I would've been content with something written in the last fifty years."

"Modern Fiction is in the library," Bruce stopped directly before him and looked at him. "Sorry."

Richard's smile didn't fade, but he had the distinct feeling, as he always did, that Bruce was reading him, and for a moment, until Bruce extended his hand, Richard was afraid of what he'd see this time.

They shook hands and the moment passed.

"Come," Bruce said, motioning to the chairs before the fireplace, "Join me for a brandy and you can tell me what's happened while we wait for dinner."

Richard contemplated denying that anything had happened at all, but by the time he settled into the plush leather wingback chair next to Bruce, he had realized it would be pointless to try to do so.

"I met an old friend," he answered as he took the glass Bruce handed him.

"Oh?" Bruce asked, swirling the aged liqueur in the glass. "How old?"

Richard took a careful sip of the aperitif and shrugged, like it didn't really matter, "My Titan days."

"I thought you regularly kept in touch with them?"

"I watch over them," he confirmed.

"A fine distinction."

Richard agreed wordlessly.

"So, how did you encounter this old friend?" Bruce asked.

"They came to my city," he answered. He looked intently at the flash of the fire in the brownish liquid. "A coincidence," he amended. "They had to come." If he would've glanced at Bruce, he might have recognized the look of consideration on his mentor's face. "A business conference," he said, scoffing.

Bruce sipped at his drink for a moment and watched Richard as he did the same. "So, how did you see her then?" Richard lowered the glass and looked at Bruce in obvious curiosity. "You _did_ speak to her," Bruce insisted. "You wouldn't be this restless if you hadn't."

Richard had caught how easily Bruce had realized it was a 'she' he was talking about, but he knew it hadn't really been that hard to figure it out. "I talked to her." He shrugged. "I probably would've seen her before I did," he met Bruce's questioning eyes. "Detective Richard Grayson was assigned to assure the security of the convention center."

Bruce scoffed, "Ah, irony."

Richard nodded and sipped at his drink.

"So?" Bruce prodded. "Was she not pleased to see you?"

Richard lowered his head to look into his glass, hiding his expression momentarily from his all-seeing mentor by the fall of his hair. "We fought," he answered. "I didn't realize how angry I was at her until..." he trailed off and sighed.

"Why?" Bruce asked.

"She's a doctor now," Richard answered. "In a small town in upstate California."

"Incredibly appropriate for Raven, I think," Bruce answered.

Richard looked up in surprise, "Who said it was --?"

"Come, Richard, give me _some_ credit," he raised a brow. "So, she's a doctor..." he took his time about taking another drink, "A good one if I know anything about Raven."

Richard nodded, but not like he was happy about it.

"So?" Bruce prodded.

"So how could she just give it all up, Bruce?" he asked before he had a chance to think of an adequately non-committal response. He pressed his lips closed and looked at the fire, but the words were still in his head and wouldn't be erased so easily. "How could she just go on like none of it meant anything?" he asked, his tone almost a whisper. "Live as if the world didn't need her?"

Bruce shifted, leaning back in the chair and holding the crystal glass with both hands. When he looked at Richard over the rim of the glass, Richard wasn't quite prepared for his declaration: "Because it doesn't."

Richard stopped moving. "How could you say that?" he asked quietly, almost dangerously. "After all she's done--"

"She did what she had to do," Bruce answered stoically. "More even, probably out of a sense of guilt, maybe some sense of responsibility..." he lowered the glass so that it rested on the arm of the chair and leaned forward, "But that life was _never_ what she was meant to do." Richard looked taken aback and like he wanted to argue at the same time. "Have you forgotten how she was raised, Richard?" Bruce asked. He waited a moment for the question to sink into his consciousness, for him to really _think_ about it. "_You_ taught her how to fight."

"Someone teaches everyone," Richard said, looking at Bruce meaningfully, "Even you."

"I'm different," Bruce shrugged one shoulder, "I went looking for this life to fill a void, I wanted revenge and then I kept going because it was all I knew that defined me." He sighed, barely audibly, "Raven's not like me," he looked at Richard. "She never really was."

Richard remained silent, sipping at the drink but not really tasting it.

"Neither were you."

Richard met his eyes, unable to keep the surprise from his expression.

Bruce's voice, when it came, was soft and almost sad, nearly apologetic, "You're _not_ like me, Richard, not really."

"Aren't I?" Richard asked, looking at the fire, absently rolling the glass in his hand. "I feel more like you every day, Bruce." Richard scoffed, "No, not like you," he shook his head and looked up to meet Bruce's eyes. "Like the Batman."

"I never chose to be with others," Bruce said in a somewhat nostalgic voice. "I always wanted to be alone, it wasn't anybody else's choice but my own and it wasn't because I didn't think anyone else was worthy or at my level or because anyone else annoyed me..." he paused, thinking how to best explain, "Barbara, Tim, even the Justice League," he shook his head, "I paired up with all of them because I had to, or because I thought it was the right thing to do in the moment, not because I wanted to." He waited until Richard met his eyes.

"What about me?" he asked.

"I allowed you to join me because it was the only way I knew how to be a father," he admitted. "I didn't do a very good job of it anyway, as it turns out, but I thought it was what you needed at that point, and in retrospect, my life has been better for it," he sighed and leaned back in the chair again, looking almost tired for the first time Richard could remember. "But in the end, I've always been a loner, even when I tried to be a father," he continued. "That wasn't the case with you." There was something like amazement on his features when Richard looked at him. "You always craved the company of others, you befriended Alfred, Barbara," he shook his head. "And in the end, you even befriended the friendless, the one who didn't know how to be a friend. You more than paired up with the Titans, you made a _team_."

"That was then," Richard said after a few moments of silence let Bruce's statements sink in. "I'm different now."

"You might think you have to be, but you don't really want to be," Bruce said in his no-nonsense way.

Richard seemed to think about it for a few moments and finally laughed, but there was no real mirth to the sound. "There's no purpose in even considering it," he said bitterly. He met Bruce's eyes again, "I asked her to stay, Bruce," he confessed. "I asked her to stay with me. She said it was too late." He shook his head and looked at the fire again, "She left knowing that I --" he cut himself off and took a sudden drink from the glass, draining it.

Bruce was shaking his head, disappointment clear in the press of his lips. "I thought I'd taught you how to problem solve better than that, Dick," he said, slipping into the old nickname unconsciously.

Richard didn't need for Bruce to spell out what he meant. "I've got responsibilities," he excused. "Blüdhaven needs me."

Bruce sighed heavily and looked around him at the lavish yet classic appointments of his study, "The world is always going to need someone," he said thoughtfully, his eye catching on a particular vase he didn't remember putting in the room. "Which is why there will always be someone to fill that void," he shook his head, dismissing the mystery of the vase as something Alfred must have decided would add something to the dreary place. Bruce leveled his heavy, pregnant gaze on Richard's. "There will always even be people like me who choose to live this life until they die and there will be those who serve a particular purpose and move on." He cocked his head to the side and started to stand, "The world is selfish. It's not wrong to be selfish in return." The quick wrap on the door signaled Alfred's presence on the other side. "Raven has figured that out, I'd wager," he said as Alfred entered the room.

"Dinner," Alfred announced, watching Bruce make his way to the door.

"Come on, or it'll get cold," Bruce called without turning back to him as he crossed the threshold.

"Dinner is ceviche tonight," Alfred announced. "It's already cold."

"Then it'll be warm by the time I get there," Bruce groused as they started walking toward the dining room. "Takes me so long to get anywhere these days," he said underneath his breath.

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  
__**Raven  
**__xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

"Oh, thank God!"

Raven raised a brow at Amos and his theatrics as she entered her own office. "You don't believe in God," she pointed out.

"I do now," he answered adamantly. "He saved me from committing suicide if I had to attend to one more sprained ankle or snot nosed kid."

Raven rolled her eyes and Amos gladly relinquished the seat behind the desk, taking off his white coat as he went. "How do you keep your sanity treating these boring cases day in and day out?" he asked sincerely.

"I appreciate boring," Raven answered, settling back into her space. "And plus, it's not about the diseases for me, Amos, it's about the people."

He made a face. "You'd get to treat really _interesting_ people if you came back to the city with me."

Raven glanced sideways at him. "Amos, we've been through this."

"Yeah, but I thought after a weekend in Blüdhaven you might change your mind."

She shook her head and turned away from him, uncertain what her face might reveal. She didn't speak until she was certain her voice would be normal. "Sorry, it didn't."

"I don't understand how a born city girl like you could be happy in a place that has no excitement."

"Excitement is overrated," she said honestly. "There's much to be said for a predictable, stable environment." She shrugged. "Besides, I had enough excitement as a kid to last me a lifetime."

"Jeez," Amos laughed. "Anyone who heard you talk might think you grew up in a war zone somewhere instead of a boarding school in Jump City."

Raven raised a brow, "Have you ever _lived_ in a boarding school?"

It was Amos' turn to roll his eyes and he did so with a flourish, much more at ease being in the guest chair now that he didn't _have_ to be there. "It can't be enough excitement to last you a lifetime," he argued.

"Says you," she finished, sitting in her chair and looking around her for the next thing she needed to organize.

"I still think if you gave Fresno a chance..."

Raven leaned forward in her chair and gave Amos the look he had come to recognize as her no-argument-will-move-her-and-she-was-tired-of-saying-so look. "Amos, I've _tried_ living and working in a city, remember?" She asked meaningfully. "For a whole year I did it. Every night I left work frustrated and near to quitting, nearly every night I argued with the hospital's staff when they told me they'd transferred out a patient I was working on because he was stable and had no insurance," she shook her head. "I don't want to do that anymore."

"Can you really look me in the eye and tell me you're happy here?" Amos asked seriously.

She leaned back and sighed. "I like my life here," she answered.

"That isn't exactly an answer."

She was quiet for a moment, considering, before smiling. "You see why I never accept Kim's invitation to dinner?" Raven asked in an attempt to change the subject. "Whenever I do, all _you_ do the whole time is harp on me about moving to Fresno and leaving my good life here."

"I want you to be happy, Rache," Amos said. "Kim does too." He shook his head. "Sometimes I look at you and I don't see happiness in you."

"And you think I'll get that happiness in the city?" she asked. She shook her head, smiling a little. "No, Amos, I won't. It isn't as simple as moving."

Amos thought about pursuing the line, but he knew better. He knew, from the getgo, that there were aspects of Rachel's life that she wouldn't talk about. It didn't mean he'd give up on her. Maybe she was lonely? _'Doesn't Kim have that nephew from Toledo coming in next month?' _he wondered. _'He's about Rachel's age...'_ He made a mental note to ask Kim to invite Rachel over for dinner next month and decided to drop the topic for now. "Okay, fine, so why don't you tell me what new innovations the medical field was going ga-ga over at this convention?"

Raven was too worried about what she would tell Amos about a convention she had hardly paid attention to to notice the look on his face or how easily he had dropped the subject this time.

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  
__**Robin  
**__xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

Nightwing looked out at his city and wondered why he had picked it. It seemed so long ago that he settled in Blüdhaven, long enough he couldn't remember what had made him pick it above any other city. If he was completely honest with himself – and alone at three am he could be nothing but – he would have to admit that his only real criteria for a place to live had been danger.

Live.

Nightwing scoffed, and it echoed off cold concrete as he walked through a barren alley. He wouldn't call what he was doing living. He hadn't been searching for a place to live. He had been looking for a place to exist – to fight – to protect, but not live.

He had called it need – a place that _needed_ him, but Bruce was right. No place really needed _him_, did it? He looked down at dirty streets and up at skyscrapers as he perched on the ledge of a dwarf of a building in comparison with the others. What would Blüdhaven be like without him? How had Blüdhaven _really_ changed since he'd been there?

So he got a few criminals off the streets for a few years – months – hell, hours. He was a band aid, temporary relief, when what Blüdhaven needed was something much more potent.

And there were others out there doing what he did. With better reasons, too.

What were his reasons?

Justice. Protection.

It was a night for truths – and the truth was that he had been steadily losing himself.

He said he still stood for justice and protection, that those were the reasons he still fought, still went out every night, but were they really? Or were they merely side effects of his need to do _something? _He would never do anything to hurt an innocent, but what had happened to his moral compass?

Before, he never really enjoyed fighting in an actual battle. No one ever really knew that except for Raven. She had told him once, early on in their friendship, that she was raised as a pacifist, but only after he had called her on the weaknesses of her fighting style. He had pointed out that she only blocked and shielded, herself and others, during a fight, that she never attacked and she had explained why.

The only reason she had allowed him to teach her how to fight offensively at all had been because he had confessed to not liking the fight against their enemies. He had always liked the thrill of the sparing match, the game of who can outsmart who, he had always been competitive, but being in a brawl just to show superior strength had never been his choice.

He remembered the conversation as if it had just happened. He remembered the time, not too long afterward when the Titans had gone to the local Orphanage and the look she gave him as he helped some of the kids.

He had never _enjoyed_ fighting their enemies.

Before.

Now?

Did he fight to help those in need or was the fact that he helped those in need a by product of his need to fight?

When he was a Titan...when he had her to talk to and keep him grounded...

Raven.

She had said he looked the way he had before the Titans.

He wasn't sure she knew how right she was. How much sense it made that he looked the same now as when he first met her.

She gave him purpose. He didn't have any before her.

Or after her either.

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

The prostitute ran to her fallen pimp as soon as Nightwing stepped away from the crumpled man.

"What are you doing?!" she screamed at him. "You've almost killed him!" Nightwing stood by in silence, waiting for the woman's hysterics to calm enough for him to take the man whom he had just stopped from beating her to the jail.

"You bastard!" the woman screamed, trying to wake up her abuser.

He started forward to take the man from her grasp and she pulled the pimp to her chest, as if she would protect him from Nightwing.

"Leave us alone! Don't you get it!? You shouldn't be stickin' your nose where it don't belong! You think you're helping, but you're not!" Her adamant words stopped his step. "Don't you get it? No one 'cept B-no messes with B-no's girls, and one day, you're not going to be strollin' by and someone's gonna kill me instead of just beat me – you get it?" she was crying. "You can't be everywhere, and you can't save everyone, so just leave us alone! You're only making things worse by stickin' your nose where it don't belong!" She shook her head of bad fake curly blond hair at him. "Why dontcha go catch that freak what broke outta jail yesterday with his hot shot lawyer, huh?" she asked. "Go play your cat and mouse games with other freaks like you and leave us regular folk the hell outta it!"

"_I make a difference there...and I can see that difference around me everyday."_(2)

Raven's words from that night in the hotel room echoed in his ears as he walked away from the corner where the prostitute was still hugging her pimp to her. He wouldn't try to get the man to a jail, what would be the point? What would it solve?

A town like Blüdhaven needed something he could never do as a vigilante. Something he couldn't do even as a detective on the beat.

He was just a band aid.

He couldn't save everyone...

But did that mean he had to die along with them?

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  
__**Raven  
**__xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

It hit her at odd, unguarded moments. She might be in the middle of her third stitch, thinking how little Jesse would need at least two more as he told her all the details of his spectacular fall, and the thought would just suddenly appear.

_'He asked me to stay.'_

It was just for the briefest of moments – she never held on to it for long or followed it down the path of what ifs and maybes.

It would be gone just as soon as it appeared, leaving her reeling only a little from the shock of it.

Undoubtedly, however, at some other random point, while she picked oranges from the fruit seller's cart or when she stirred sauce on the stove or wrote up her progress notes for the patients she'd seen that day, whatever she was doing, whether her mind was actually occupied or blank, it didn't matter, it would come again. Even though the words sometimes were different.

_'He loves me.'_

_'He wants me.'_

_'He didn't forget me.'_

Underneath it all though, the thought that would follow if she let it was always the same.

_'He asked me to stay. And I said no.'_

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

Throughout most of her early life, Robin had been her rock. He had always been there, always supported her without words, sometimes literally. He was stable and constant. He was her earth: changeable, yes, but always there.

When suddenly he wasn't, a part of her had panicked and for awhile, she fooled herself that her desire to see him again, the catch in her breath every time she turned a corner or opened a door expecting him on the other side was because of that dependence, a result of that fear.

When Vic and Karen asked her move in with them and transfer to a university close to them so she wouldn't be alone, she had been forced to admit she wasn't afraid of being alone. She didn't look for him because she wanted her rock, she looked for him because she missed his voice...because it hurt that she still thought of him when a movie they had watched together played on the television or a book she had recommended crossed her path, but he seemed to have forgotten about her completely.

And now...

He asked her to stay and she had said no. How much had she wanted him to ask her that nine years ago?

Was she punishing him? Because she had been hurt when she thought he had forgotten her, was she punishing him now for that?

_'He loved me.'_

She paused as she put a quart of milk in her grocery cart and let the thought sink in for a moment.

_'He asked me to stay.'_

She lowered the milk the rest of the way into the cart and pushed passed the display of ice cream, going absently for the eggs.

_'I can love you, but I can't be happy...' _(3)

She had meant it at the time, but now?

She tried to picture what her life might be like if she had stayed and couldn't think beyond being with him. How much of his life was he willing to change when he hadn't even been able to talk to her? He was Nightwing, there was no changing that. And although she loved _her_ Robin, loved the tenderness and the caring she saw in Richard's eyes in Blüdhaven, could she love Nightwing?

What was more, would she be content to work in Blüdhaven Municipal Hospital, filing out HMO forms and dealing with hospital administrators? How long before she started to dread going to work and watching as another person without insurance or assistance was sent away before she could save them to an overcrowded, understaffed hospital without the resources to do it?

She had been there and done that. She _couldn't_ be happy there. She _had_ tried.

How long before she preferred to go out on patrol with him than stay at home waiting for him to come back, wounded or worse?

She couldn't do that anymore.

She wasn't punishing him, how could she be when there was a part of her that was already dead after walking away from him?

She couldn't be completely happy in Shaver Lake without him there, but she could be content.

She'd have to be.

She'd learn to forget him again, eventually.

At first, the moments when she'd remember the choice she made would surprise her with their consistency, annoy her and sadden her, tire her in her attempts to go on as if nothing were wrong. But eventually, days or weeks, maybe months later, she'd see a picture of him in the paper and be shocked to realize she hadn't thought of him in a long time. It would hurt when she did, all over again as if the wound were still fresh, but eventually, that would fade too. She could live with that. The dull ache, every so often. She might even eventually find someone else she could share her life with. And someday, she might even love that person. Never the way she loved him, she could never fool herself to ever expect that, but there were many different kinds of love. She knew that already. She deserved some form of love, comfort, companionship.

Someday.

When the elevator doors slid open on her floor and her breath caught in expectation as she looked at the empty, well lit hallway, she berated herself for the half second she had entertained the possibility that the sight that greeted her might be other than it was.

She had been doing that since she got on the plane at Blüdhaven Airport and she hated that she couldn't stop.

_'He isn't coming,'_ she told herself and resolutely stepped out of the elevator. _'And the sooner you get that through your head, Rachel, the sooner you can get on with your life,'_ she decided, starting down the hallway toward her apartment. _'There's even less reason to believe he'll come now than there was before,'_ she reminded herself, shifting the two paper bags filled with groceries in her arms absently in order to free her hand holding her keyring. _'He's not coming,'_ she told herself, turning the corner and looking down at her keys, doing her best to search for the gold house key and not her silver office key, balance her bags, and walk at the same time. There was never anyone up on her floor at the time she got in, so she didn't worry about bumping into anyone. She was used to this routine. She even knew when to stop so she'd be in front of her door without having to bother to so much as look up.

_'Stop looking for him,'_ she thought and, two feet from her door, gold key in hand and grocery bags perched precariously along her left hip, looked up.

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxx  
__**Omniscient  
**__xxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

The first thing to go were the bags.

The grocery bags slipped out of her numb fingers and hit the worn in carpet of the hallway, spilling it's contents across the space between them. She might have winced at the sound of the eggs cracking in their case as they hit the floor, or followed the oranges that scattered out of the toppled bag every which way with a resigned eye, but she couldn't seem to take her eyes off the figure standing in front of her door long enough.

For awhile, they stared at each other in utter stillness. Then he moved, tilted his head, his eyes flickering to the orange that rolled by his booted foot and it was as if the loss of his gaze freed her from the utter shock and she was free to frown, to close her mouth and start to think.

She started to take a step toward him, then stopped, half afraid that if she moved, the man in front of her door at the end of the hall in the casual jeans and black jacket would move or shift and the light would show he was someone else entirely and not who she thought at all.

They were close enough already, so close that she could see the light from the window behind him at the end of the hall gleam off his dark hair which he'd picked up at the nape of his neck and away from his face. Close enough that she could see the breath rise and fall under his chest.

He took a step toward her and she reacted instinctively by taking a step back.

He lowered the hand he had started to lift to reach for her and stopped moving, as if she'd hit him.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, finally finding her voice.

"I let you go once," he said, his voice sounding deeper than she remembered it in the echoing hallway. "I couldn't do it again."

She felt the tears she had been holding back sting her eyes and shook her head, "Nothing's changed," she said through the thickening of her throat. She felt the bite of her keys against her palms and knew she was clenching her fist, but she couldn't stop. It was all she could do not to reach out to him. "I can't live in Blüdhaven."

"I suppose I'll have to settle in Shaver Lake, then."

She gasped and swallowed, trying to still the rapid beating of her heart. "You don't--"

He cut her off by taking a step toward her, bridging the distance between them so that she almost had to look up to look at his face. "You said you wouldn't ask me to leave my life in Blüdhaven, but you never said I couldn't choose to." He raised his hand and held it a few inches from her cheek, "You said I wouldn't be happy if I had to leave my life in Blüdhaven, but there's something you didn't consider."

She barely resisted leaning that minimal inch into his warmth. "What?" she asked.

He let his hand touch her cheek, caressed her skin for a moment and when she didn't pull away, sighed, like some muted pain he'd learned to live with just suddenly disappeared. "I was never happy _in_ Blüdhaven," he answered on a whisper. "I've never been happy anywhere you aren't," he confessed.

"What about Nightwing?" she asked, also on a whisper. "What about Blüdhaven?"

"Blüdhaven needs more than what Nightwing can give it," he answered surely. "I lost my purpose, slowly but surely, Raven, and it all started when I lost you." His other arm had found purchase around her waist. "I am _not_ Nightwing," he said. "I don't need Nightwing anymore and the world can make do without him. I think I held onto him for so long because I didn't know who I'd be without him, but I know who I want to be now. "

She sighed and closed her eyes. "Who?"

"Richard," he said, smiling tenderly at her when she opened her eyes and he saw the love in them. "Just Richard."

"And what does Richard want?" she asked slowly, carefully.

"I want to be happy, Raven," he answered. "And since I love you, that means that I need to be where you are," he paused, "If you'll have me."

She didn't have to answer, she just leaned into his body and wrapped her arms around him, holding him close. "Are you certain?" she asked, against his chest.

He held her tighter. "I've never been more certain of anything in my life."

She pulled back and she was smiling. "Then you owe me twenty-five dollars and seventy-one cents for my groceries."

He smiled and kissed her.

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

**NOTE:**

(1) I found this character on a forum somewhere that listed all of Nightwing's nemesis. I looked him up on Wikipidia and it confirmed that this guy had worked for Blockbuster in Blüdhaven at one point, so I figured why not? I really know nothing about him, so if there any of his fans out there, you'll have to forgive me. I just needed a name.

(2) From _Part X_ of _Estranged_.

(3) From _Part X_ of _Estranged._

**A/N:** So...what'd you guys think of the ending? Expected? Unexpected? Was it contrived? Did it seem like a believable result? Give it to me, I can take it! I swear.

My biggest worry when writing this chapter was that I needed to give him a valid reason to come find her and her a valid believable excuse not to stay with him. I'm telling you, if it wasn't because I 'saw' that scene in the hallway at the end so clear in my head almost from the beginning, I would've been seriously tempted to leave it without their getting together.

My second biggest worry when writing this chapter was the part with Bruce. I talked to my two biggest Bruce Points of Reference, _**Absentia**_ and _**Kysra**_. They helped keep his age and state of mind in perspective for me, because although I knew Dick probably couldn't make the decision he made without at least talking to Bruce (doesn't mean he would do as Bruce suggested at all) I couldn't figure out what Bruce was going to say to him or how. I'd never really written Bruce at all. So...how do you guys think I did about that?

**Playlist:**

Mostly

_Far Away_, by Nickelback (The Estranged Anthem) and  
_Roadside,_ by Rise Against.

But also

_Pero Te Extrano,_ Andrea Bocelli  
_Always On Your Side, _Sheryl Crow & Sting  
_Ella Ya Me Olvido,_ Leonardo Favio  
_Gravity,_ John Mayer  
_Better Than Me,_ Hinder  
_Forget to Remember,_ Mudvayne

**REMINDER:** There is an Epilogue coming, folks.


	12. Part XII: Epilogue

**EDIT:** I forgot to give major propage to **_Guyute24_** who read the first draft of this before I had decided how to end it and suggested the current option. So, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU Peaches!

**A/N:** Now, THIS is truly the end. The thing I realized while writing this is that it doesn't keep to the same tone that _Estranged_ has had throughout. I'm worried that might be a bad thing, but I can't see how else to do it. THIS has been _Estranged's_ Epilogue the whole time, foe better or worse, and so it's what it is. I hope you all don't mind it too much.

**Thanks:** To EVERYONE who followed this fic from inception to end, who encouraged me to continue it and assured me that even if it was dark and angsty, it was still enjoyable and good and that it kept to their characters. So...thank you. All of you. (Individual thanks on 'emsscraps'.)

**SPECIAL NOTE:**

_**HAPPY ADVANCED BIRTHDAY GUARDIAN KYSRA!!!!**_

(It's July 24th, but this has always been her b-day present and I'll be at the EoD, part II on that day, so...)

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

_**Estranged  
**__**Part XII: Epilogue**_

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

"_Though love may break, it never dies."  
_- My One True Friend, Bette Midler

"_Even through it all, I'm always on your side."  
_- Always On Your Side, Sheryl Crow & Sting

Roy never gave small towns much thought. He had heard plenty about them, of course – everyone had. He had heard about how everyone knew everyone in small towns, and it was the main thing he was counting on since otherwise he wouldn't have any idea how to find her. He had only been told she lived in Shaver Lake and it wasn't like there was a directory he had been able to find. (How could any city, small as it might be, not have a directory online somewhere?)

One thing he hadn't expected was that there would only be one public eatery of any particular repute. The Starlight Diner looked much like any other greasy spoon found anywhere else in the country, only this one was couched between a hardware store on one side and a bookstore on the other along what was apparently _the_ main street.

This was a big plus. He had worried that he'd have to ask around several places, but if there was only one, well, so much the better.

The bell over the door tinkled merrily as he entered. He drew some attention as he walked in and since it was lunch time, it seemed everyone in the town was at the counter, tables, or booths along the walls. A few people dressed in business attire stood up from a booth along the back and made their way toward him, waving to the man behind the counter. As they walked by him to get to the door, they glanced curiously at him. He smiled his charming smile and they stepped outside into the northern California sunshine without a word.

He made his way to the counter, smiling at the man behind it who was staring at him in expectation.

"What'll it be, stranger?" the man asked, pleasant enough.

Roy smiled even brighter as he approached. "A coffee to start with," he answered and when the man set about pouring him a steaming cup and putting the cream and sugar within reach he continued, "And second, I was hoping someone here might be able to help me find someone I was told lives in this town."

"Oh?" The man asked, looking somewhat suspicious.

"She's an old friend of mine from our younger days, the name's Rachel Roth?"

The man seemed to think about it for a moment. "Rachel Roth, huh?" he asked.

"You mean _Doc_ Rae?" a woman, about the man's age asked, coming up behind the man with a few plates in her hands.

Roy smiled at her charmingly, "Yes, I believe she is a doctor."

"Well, her offices' are just down the street there," the man said, as if he weren't exactly sure he wanted to be saying it. "You're an old friend of hers, you say?"

Roy nodded, "Just down the street?" he asked, starting to take out money to pay for the coffee. "Thanks—"

"Well, she's not there now," the woman offered, walking out from behind the counter to drop off her plates with her waiting customers.

"Oh, that's right," the man agreed. "It's Wednesday."

Roy was confused. "She doesn't work on Wednesday?"

"Of course she does," the man said, offended. "She makes house calls on Wednesdays."

"Not all day mind you, but from noon till about 4, give or take, depending on who needs to see her," the woman explained, wiping her hands as she came back around the counter.

Roy took a sip of his coffee, his eyes widening in pleasant surprise. "This is good coffee!"

"Best in five states," the man said proudly.

Roy smiled and took another sip before asking, "Might her office know where she's visiting now?"

"Her office won't know," the woman provided. "Doc Rae herself often doesn't know where she's off to when she goes off...it all depends on who needs her, you see?"

Roy didn't particularly see. How could she not know where she was needed unless those that needed her called her office? "Is there some way I can get in contact with her?" he pressed.

"You should wait," the woman said. "It's almost two now, she'll be in for her lunch at two. She always is on Wednesdays." And without waiting for his reply, the woman was off to take someone else's order.

Roy looked at his watch, finished his coffee, and considered whether to wait or try and find her office just in case they might know where she was after all when the man refilled his cup.

"Why don't you stick around?" the man asked, filling the mug up with practiced ease, "Take that booth over there," he pointed, "And you can have some lunch yourself while you wait?"

Roy smiled, "How's the pie here?"

"The best in ten states," the man boasted.

Roy laughed and walked to the booth, taking a seat, ignoring looks as he passed. "I'll have the pie," he told the woman as she walked by.

"You got it, hun," the woman confirmed, walking back toward her husband behind the counter.

"Maybe we should call the sheriff?" her husband asked, looking at Roy.

"I'll do it from the back," the woman agreed, walking to the office to do just that.

A few minutes later, at ten minutes to two to be precise, the bell over the door tinkled once again, but considering it had been tinkling pretty consistently since Roy had sat down he hardly noticed.

Also, the fact that Roy had discovered that the best pie in ten states really _was_ the best pie in ten states, might also have contributed to the fact that he didn't even notice how the man behind the counter stopped what he was doing to meet the newcomer's eyes. Or, how the newcomer took off his hat and found the top of Roy's bright red capped head even before the man behind the counter motioned to him.

Roy didn't even notice when the waitress that had brought him the pie stepped around the newcomer, greeting him: "Sheriff," looking pointedly at Roy.

"Afternoon, Maddie," the Sheriff greeted as he walked to the booth along the back, approaching Roy from behind.

In fact, his preoccupation with the fabulous pie and the fact that Roy was so used to attracting attention combined so that he didn't notice he was being stared at or approached at all until he felt the gaze of someone directly behind him boring into his back, right between the shoulder blades. He put down the fork carefully on the side of the plate, half his second slice of pie still waiting to be consumed.

"So, I hear you're looking for my wife."

Roy considered how to approach this situation, and turned to face the owner of the deep voice. His eyes first caught on the badge that had "Sheriff" engraved on its shiny silver surface, and he thought, _'Great…I've attracted the local law…and he's Rae's hubby.'_ Understandably, it took a moment for recognition to dawn on Roy, even as his attention spread from the uniform up to the youngish face framed by strands of longish black hair just grazing the tops of his ears.

"Fuck me, you're the sheriff?!" Roy exclaimed.

The Sheriff walked around the booth and took the seat across from him, smiling at Roy's amazement. "Hello, Roy," he greeted, still smiling.

Something else sunk into Roy's mind as he looked into the amused blue eyes of his old friend who had for all intents and purposes, completely fallen off the radar. "Wait..._your_ wife?" he pressed, even more shocked than the first time.

"You were looking for Rae, weren't you?" he asked innocently.

"Dick, you fucking bastard," Roy said, smiling despite himself. "You know exactly why I'm surprised!"

Richard leaned back in the booth as the woman from before brought him his own cup of coffee and walked away with a wave. "Is it really that hard to imagine we got married?"

"It's hard to imagine I wasn't invited to the wedding!" Roy accused.

Richard shrugged, "You were invited," he countered. "We didn't know where you were, and we couldn't exactly go asking around."

Roy frowned, "Why not?"

Richard sighed, "We're trying to keep a low profile here," he explained. "We didn't want to call too much attention to this."

"But it's not a secret that Rae's a doctor here…it never has been."

Richard nodded. "It isn't a secret, no. It hasn't been advertised, but it isn't a secret. We just thought it best if the least amount of non-essential people knew that we were trying to make a life for ourselves here," he shook his head, leaned back, and sipped from his plain white mug of coffee. "You were the only one of the people we wanted to invite who we couldn't get in touch with – you disappeared off the map, Roy. I mean, none of the old guard knew where you were."

Roy blushed and leaned back too. "Well, I needed to take some time to find myself, I think."

Richard gave him a look he was familiar with, the considering-guy look, wherein he weighed his options between asking about an obviously personal thing and keeping mute about it. "When'd you lose yourself?" he finally decided.

Roy chuckled, "Long story," he evaded. "Maybe some other time," he smiled to let his friend know he meant it and then leaned forward again, resting his arms on the clean Formica table. Roy shook his head, "I'm so gonna kill Vic," he decided. "He could've told me you were married!"

Richard nodded, "Oh, I will bet you anything I'll be getting a call from Vic tonight."

"So," Roy grinned, "You and Rae," he shook his head. "I gotta admit, I always kind of thought you two had a thing-not-a-thing going on, you know?"

Richard raised a brow, "A thing-not-a-thing?"

Roy shrugged. "You know what I mean."

Richard chuckled, "Obviously, I don't."

Roy grinned mischievously. "Well, I wasn't sure about it until that time you almost broke my leg during that sparring match we had after I'd asked Rae out on a date, remember that?"

Richard narrowed his eyes, "Oh yeah..." he said in a serious pensive way enemies of justice had learned to fear. He grinned and it was dangerous and sharp. "I remember."

Roy frowned, "You know, I _had_ thought the sprain was an accident, but now I'm starting to wonder."

Richard chuckled. "Which reminds me..." he raised a brow, "Why are you looking for Rae, anyway?"

"I was actually in the neighborhood," Roy answered breezily, remembering his pie suddenly and digging up a large forkful. "I'd heard Rae was living here, thought I'd drop in and--"

"What?" Richard prompted.

Roy laughed, "Dude, easy," he said. "I really did just want to drop in and say hi, see how she was."

"Hm," Richard allowed.

Roy quirked his lips challengingly. "Threatened, Blunder Wonder?"

"Of you?" Richard asked. "Hardly."

"Well, I'll have you know--" Roy started.

"Yeah, sure, uh-huh," Richard didn't let him finish.

"What do you mean by that?" Roy asked, sitting up.

The bell over the door dinged, but although Richard's eyes flicked over Roy's shoulder, Roy ignored it. Richard smiled and put down his coffee cup.

"Are you trying to insinuate there is some woman on this planet I couldn't--" he cut himself off as he finally noticed the look on Richard's face. His face fell. "She's behind me, isn't she?"

"Do go on, Roy," Raven's unmistakable voice came from behind Roy. He turned in surprise to look at her, grin faltering and eyes widening as he took in the rest of her, then settling back into a wide smile as he met her eyes again. "What is it you think you can do to any woman on the planet?"

Roy stood up and grinned in shock and surprise. "What does that matter?" he asked, waving that away and pointing at her, "You're pregnant!" he exclaimed.

Raven looked around her at the diner as Roy's exclamation called the attention of everyone in the restaurant. She waved a greeting, and waited until everyone's attention went back to their food and their conversation with a few snickers before turning back to Roy. "Observant as ever, Roy," she deadpanned.

Richard scooted over in the booth, making enough room for her to slide in next to him, but Roy embraced her, wrapping his arms around her rather protruding form before she could.

"Wow, it's never been that hard to hug you before!" Roy chuckled. "But you look great!" he hurried to assure her.

Raven slid into her seat, putting her black medicine bag on the floor next to her. "Thank you," she said before Richard could interject to ask about when Roy had hugged her in the past. She smiled at Richard and busied his lips with a kiss.

Before they knew it, the woman who originally brought Roy his pie and Richard his coffee had a steaming plate and a glass and was placing it in front of Raven.

"There ya go, hun," the woman said, smiling at her in welcome.

"Thank you, Maddie," Raven smiled and took a drink from her glass. "Oh, I needed that," Raven told her. "This is your best iced tea yet, I think," she told the woman.

"You shush," Maddie said, waving the comment away. "How was Mrs. Jenkins today?"

Raven smiled, pleased. "She's responding exceptionally well to the treatment." Raven nodded, "She'll be tending her garden come Spring, you wait and see."

Maddie grinned. "That's real good to hear," she nodded. "Can I refill your cups, gentlemen?" she asked.

"Maddie, have you met Roy?" Raven asked, starting in on her plate and motioning to him with her chin. "He's a friend of ours from our boarding school days," she explained.

"Nice ta meet'cha," Maddie nodded.

"Maddie, did you make this pie?" Roy asked, smiling.

"Sure did," Maddie answered proudly.

"Then I'm _really_ glad to meet _you_," Roy said charmingly.

Maddie laughed and waved him off too. "G'on you charmer," she said. "You're not getting any more pie outta me, there's only one slice left and that one's Doc's."

"You tell 'em Maddie," Richard said from next to Raven.

"No, I did not save you a slice either, Sheriff, so you'll have to beg your wife for a bite of hers if you want any," she said, and, winking at Raven, went back to the counter.

"I think Maddie likes you better than me," Richard told Raven.

Raven smirked, "Oh, I know she likes me better."

"What _are_ you eating?" Roy asked, his attention finally falling on the concoction of substances he couldn't really distinguish.

Richard laughed heartily but Raven looked at Roy as if he was daft for not recognizing it.

"Chicken soup," she answered.

"That," Roy pointed, "is _not_ chicken soup." He shook his head. "It can't be." He narrowed his eyes in contemplation of it, "Unless it mutated."

Richard nodded. "Its chicken soup all right," he confirmed. Raven gave Roy a look as if saying 'I told you so' before spooning up more of the strange mixture. "With some white rice and milk in it."

Roy made a face. "Eew," he said. "Chicken soup, white rice _and_ milk?"

Raven shrugged and swallowed. "I'm apparently suffering from some sort of dietary deficiency, probably calcium and potassium, but all I've been craving since my third trimester is chicken soup with rice and milk."

"That and egg yolks mixed into vanilla ice cream," Richard added.

"Double eew," Roy said.

"Actually, the ice cream with the egg yolks isn't half bad," Richard defended. "And to tell you the truth, the chicken soup thing is much better than what she was craving at 6 weeks."

Roy was almost afraid to ask, but he did anyway. "What?"

"Kori's Pudding of Friendship."

Roy shuddered. "Oh, man!" he exclaimed, wincing. "That isn't right!"

"When we told her, she made enough to last us three years," Richard laughed. "Can you imagine having that in your fridge?"

"I knew I didn't like it," Raven admitted, "I just couldn't seem to stop wanting to eat it." She shook her head, raising the last spoonful of food into her mouth. "Thankfully, I moved on from that."

"So..." Roy said thoughtfully, "Does that mean you don't really want the pie Maddie's got saved for you?"

"Touch my pie and die," Raven said calmly.

Richard shook his head. "Roy, trust me, you do _not_ want to get between a pregnant woman and her food," he advised.

"Marriage has made you soft, Dick," Roy teased.

Richard laughed, "Just wait until you get married."

"Me?" Roy shook his head adamantly. "Not gonna happen."

"That's what you say now," Richard said.

"Nope, I know it," he assured. "The only woman interesting enough to keep me entertained that long is already married," he grinned cheekily.

Richard narrowed his eyes at him. "You want another broken leg?"

Roy continued grinning. "I don't think you can take me now…small town life's softened you up, man."

"You think so?" Richard asked.

"Positive," Roy taunted.

"Wanna stake your limbs on that?" Richard asked, raising a brow.

Raven rolled her eyes and zoned out of the conversation, her mind going to thoughts of her day so far and what she would have to do yet until she felt the first twinge. She paused, fork halfway to her mouth for another bite of pie, and waited. When it didn't go away as quickly as the other ones had in the past, she brought a hand to her distended abdomen and looked at her watch. There was no reason to hurry, she thought. She could afford to finish her pie. It was probably a false contraction, anyway. She wasn't due for another week and a half.

The boys, meanwhile, were too preoccupied with their pissing contest to notice any of this but that didn't really surprise her. Richard was a wonderful husband, but he never really noticed the little things. She looked at her watch and relaxed some when she noticed that ten minutes had passed and she hadn't had another contraction and swatted at Roy's surreptitiously extended fork when the occasion called for it.

"Aw, c'mon Rae!" Roy begged. "The crumbs! That's all I'm asking for!"

"Just because I'm pregnant doesn't mean I can't kick your ass, Roy," she warned.

"Stingy."

Richard laughed and sipped at his coffee. "So, where you heading, Roy?" he asked.

Roy raised a brow, "Are you subtly trying to ask me to leave?"

"No," Richard said, shaking his head. "I was just asking. You _did_ say you were just passing through."

Roy narrowed his eyes comically. "You telling me to move along, Sheriff?" he asked in a _really_ bad imitation of what could only be John Wayne.

"What?" Richard asked innocently. "It's not like you were planning on settling here or anything." When Roy didn't immediately answer, he lowered his mug to the table and raised a brow, "You weren't, were you?"

Roy leaned back casually, sipping at his own coffee. "Maybe."

"You wouldn't last a week," Richard predicted.

"You seem to be doing just fine," Roy pointed out.

"Yes, well," Richard smiled, "I have a reason to." He glanced at Raven. "I'll be fine anywhere so long as Rae's with me."

Raven glanced at him and they shared a smile.

"Aw," Roy cooed, smiling. "Aren't you two the cutest thing?" he teased. "You know, now that I think about it, how did you two finally end up together?" he asked. "I mean, last I heard, we all split up and Rae, you stayed West in school and Dick you ended up in Blüdhaven didn't you?"

Richard sobered and nodded, "Yes, that's right."

"So, how did you manage to…" they glanced at Roy when he trailed off and Roy motioned with his hands, "Meet up again?" He watched them as they looked at each other and knew there was an obvious story there. "Wait," he said. "Those rumors I heard through the grapevine about you two avoiding each other all those years wasn't true, was it?"

"I guess it was," Raven answered carefully.

Richard reached out and took hold of Raven's hand on the table top.

"So?" Roy prompted.

"There was a miscommunication," Raven said. "We cleared it up."

Roy exhaled. "Serves me right for trying to get juicy details from the most closed mouthed of all of us," he mumbled under his breath.

"She came to Blüdhaven for a conference," Richard explained a little more. "I saw her. We..._talked_."

"And then?" Roy prodded.

"Then I came home," Raven answered.

"Then you _obviously_ didn't really clear anything up," Roy exclaimed. "Gahd, you two are so stubborn."

"We did clear things up, Roy," Raven answered. "And it was difficult to leave," Raven admitted. "But it was the only viable option."

Roy turned to Richard. "And you let her go?"

Richard nodded soberly.

Roy smacked him across the arm.

"What the hell, Roy?" Richard asked in surprise.

"That was for letting her go, dumbass!" Roy said exasperatedly.

Raven smiled, but Richard and Roy were arguing again and they didn't notice. They also didn't see the smile turn into a wince and Raven look at her watch and frown.

"Damnit, Roy, stop that!" Richard said, smacking Roy back. "I eventually got my head out of my ass and came and found her."

Roy smiled. "I'm glad," he leaned back. "Really glad for you two," he said sincerely. "The last time I saw you, Dick, you worried me, you know?"

Richard scoffed.

"You did!" Roy insisted. "I was too into my own problems to do anything about it, but you looked like you were a walking corpse...a walking _angry_ corpse."

Richard nodded and he and Raven shared a look. "I didn't have my hope."

"You look good now," Roy nodded. "Both of you."

"Is that why you came looking for me, Roy?" Raven asked.

Roy flushed and busied himself with the salt and pepper shakers. "Well, the last time I saw you at Vic's was like two years ago, wasn't it?" he asked. "And whenever anyone mentioned Dick you sort of flinched." He shrugged. "You two were always so close, when the news got out that Nightwing," he whispered the name, "had retired and disappeared a few months ago, I wanted to make sure you were okay, I guess."

Raven smiled at him and reached out to take a hold of his hand and squeeze it. "Thank you."

Roy flushed even brighter and grinned, "Does that mean I can have your crumbs?"

Raven frowned and took her hand away, pulling her plate closer to her and narrowing her eyes at him.

Roy laughed and turned contemplative; "You know..." he started. "Maybe I'll just have to find myself some girl worth settling down for?" He looked from Richard to Raven, "Know anyone?" he asked cheekily.

Richard grinned mischievously. "Hey, maybe he and Julie would get along, huh, Rae?"

Raven snorted delicately. "Julie would chew him up and spit him out."

"And Julie's daddy would make certain your body was never found," Richard agreed happily.

"And far be it from the Sheriff of this fair town to do a damn thing about it, I suppose?" Roy asked.

"Sorry," Richard said, leaning back again. "Sheriff'd be way too busy."

"Saving cats from trees, I suppose?" Roy snarked.

"Nope," Richard replied, unperturbed. "That's George's job."

"George?" Roy asked, despite himself.

"Fire Department Chief, runs the local firehouse station," Richard answered.

"Hey, maybe I could be Fire Department Chief."

"Have to get rid of George first, I suppose," Richard mused.

"So?" Roy shrugged. "How tough could this guy be?"

"See for yourself," Richard nodded behind Roy.

"Where?" he turned around, but saw no one that looked like a Fire Department Chief anywhere in the tables or booths behind him.

"That's her there," Raven pointed, waving when she caught the attention of the brunette sitting with two other women, all about 35.

"Hey, Doc!" George called, smiling. Her table-companions followed suit.

"Hey, she's pretty cute," Roy said, smiling charmingly at her.

George frowned when she caught his smile and turned back to her table.

"Don't even bother," Richard said, chuckling. When Roy raised a brow, Richard shrugged. "She's got a gun permit."

No one noticed when Raven stopped what she was doing, looked at her watch again, and frowned. Still, she managed to stop their discussion about the merits of tough girls with two simple, calm words.

"It's time," she said casually.

"Time?" Richard looked at his watch. "Time for what?" he asked. "You don't have another appointment to see yet, do you?"

Raven shook her head, raising a hand for Maddie's attention. "_The_ time, Richard," she said, turning back to him. "The one we've been waiting nine months for."

Richard's hand, going lax from surprise, unfortunately dripped coffee onto his arm, which in scheme of things wasn't altogether too bad since Roy spit out his coffee in surprise projecting clear across the table and right into Richard's face.

"What?" Roy managed, coughing.

When the pain cut through Richard's shock, he jumped and wiped at the hot coffee on his face. Luckily, it wasn't as hot as it could have been and he wasn't scalded.

Roy looked at him just as Raven was starting to stand oh-so-calmly (and carefully) from the booth. "Rae's..." Roy blinked. "You're _not_...are you?"

"Now?" Richard squeaked. "It can't be _the_ time, Rae!" Richard argued. "You're not due for another week and a half, I've got the plan all set for a week and a half!" he insisted.

"Tell that to the baby, Richard," Raven replied calmly.

"Okay, okay," Richard tried to collect himself, while still wiping absently at the spots of coffee on his uniform sleeve. "This calls for Plan OONA," he told no one in particular.

"Plan oona?" Roy asked. "What the hell are you talking about, man, you're wife in labor!"

"I _know_!" Richard exclaimed. "And I'm handling it."

"No," Roy pointed out, "_She's_ handling it," he motioned to where Raven was talking to the waitress.

"Call Julie, would you?" Raven asked Maddie. "Let her know I'm on my way back, to please cancel all my afternoon appointments, and to call Kim at the hospital and ask her to come?" She paused to grab her bag and exhaled as another contraction hit her. She looked at her watch again. "Tell Julie they're about ten minutes apart, so Kim should hurry, and Amos too, if he finally wants to be here."

Maddie nodded. "Will do, Doc, no worries," Maddie said, excitedly, patting Raven on the arm. "You just go get comfortable, now, and everything will be fine...we'll be looking forward to meeting the new little Grayson, alright?" Raven smiled at the woman and before another word could be interchanged, Maddie turned to the counter, "Wilbur! Get on the phone and call Julie at Doc Rae's office! It's time!"

The loud exclamation had everyone in the diner up in arms, exclaiming congratulations and words of encouragement to the soon to be mother as she carefully made her way across the diner toward the door.

Maddie laughed when she turned to find the Sheriff looking about as if he'd lost something and wasn't quite sure what, mumbling about a plan and their red-haired friend looked about as shell shocked as they came.

"Grayson to Dispatch," Richard called into his communicator when he found it. "Gretchen, come in, it's time!" Richard turned to George, "George, do me a favor? Clear the streets would you?"

George smirked and saluted. "Will do, Sheriff."

"But the streets _are_ clear, Cap," one of the women with her whispered.

"Just nod and go along, Sally, his wife's in labor," George replied.

Maddie approached and Richard tried to look calm. "Everything's going to be okay, Maddie, I've got a plan."

She approached smirked. "'Course you do, Sheriff, but unless you want your wife to walk herself back to the clinic you might want to get your butt out of that chair and go to her now and worry about your plan later."

"Oh, crap, Rae!" Richard called out, hurrying out of the booth, smacking Roy in the back of the head as he passed, "C'mon!" He reached the door of the diner and called out after his somewhat wobbly wife, "Rae! Damnit, wait for me, would you?"

"I _so_ didn't sign up for this," Roy mumbled as he got out of the booth. Remembering something last minute, he turned to Maddie. "Don't we owe you...?"

Maddie laughed and shoved him toward the door. "G'on! Sheriff'll settle accounts later!"

The entire diner who had been watching the events unfold with much interest since Maddie called out for her husband to make the phone call, started laughing at Roy's question and Maddie's amused answer.

Roy half walked and half jogged to reach the door. "Hey!" he called when he looked outside to find Richard following Raven halfway down the sidewalk. He looked at where the green and white car marked _Shaver Lake Police Department: Sheriff_ on the door sat parked directly in front of the diner. "Isn't _this_ your car?" he called out, pointing at the car.

"She wants to walk," Richard called back. "Hurry up!"

Roy hurried to catch up to them and frowned. "Couldn't we use the sirens?!" he asked as he approached.

"Don't need 'em," Richard said.

"Whole town knows I'm in labor by now," Raven answered and as if to prove her right, people slowly started emerging from the stores that lined the main road, calling out congratulatory statements.

Roy chuckled as he walked along side them toward the clinic. "Small towns..."

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

**A/N:** So, what'd ya think? I think I'm going to miss this story...I've been working on it for a year now...::tears up::

I hope no one was disappointed with the Epilogue and especially not disappointed with the story as a whole.


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